CHENNAI: Even as India-based Omega Healthcare plans to hire about 1,200 - 1,500 people to explore newer markets like the United Arab Emirates this year, the company says there is very little scope for growth of data analytics and cloud intelligence firms in the Indian healthcare sector.
While retail, manufacturing and banking industries have adapted to cloud-based systems and use data analytics to find better processes, Indian healthcare providers have trailed behind such sectors.
For instance, Omega Healthcare, which extends data and revenue management services to hospitals, health insurance and health care providers, said the absence of a government mandate on health insurance is a major reason for the sluggish growth.
“Healthcare delivery in the country seems to be improving, but the lack of attention to tracking and collecting patient care data by hospitals and healthcare providers that sits in paper files and is not rendered for further research and development of drugs or betterment of healthcare is a major issue,” said Gopi Natarajan, Co-Founder, and CEO, Omega Healthcare Management Services Ltd.
A recent study by medical journal Lancet said that even as India has seen improvements in access and quality of healthcare since the 1990s, the country’s score of 41.2 points on the healthcare access and quality (HAQ) index is well below the global average and ranks lower than countries like Bangladesh, Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.
A data-driven healthcare organisation can work in areas such as research and development, public health, clinical operations, evidence-based medicine, genome study and more.
“The use of revenue management systems is at a very nascent stage. Here health insurance is not a widely accepted tool, limited coverage of insurance policies also is an issue,” Natarajan said.