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: Healthcare is at the centre of GE’s strategy. While GE Healthcare seeks to improve patient care by offering medical imaging, medical diagnostics and patient monitoring systems, the company’s healthcare strategy has been further reinforced by its recent Healthymagination initiative and the commitment to spend $6 billion over the next six years to lead the change towards lower cost, better access and improved quality in healthcare. V Raja, president and CEO, GE Healthcare, South Asia and managing director, Wipro GE Healthcare is instrumental in tripling the investments in its R&D laboratory in Bangalore. GE has invested about Rs 250 crore at its John F Welch Centre and its healthcare laboratory is expected to have 28 bays spread over 50,000 square feet, which will stimulate a real hospital-like work environment with 1,200 engineers. In an interaction with BV Mahalakshmi, Raja opines that India is seeing a tipping point in healthcare today. “Though our country has the largest pool of IT professionals and IT has left its mark on virtually every sector, healthcare is the exception. We still lack the infrastructure to enable more unified access across our rural and urban communities,” he feels. Excerpts:
How do you view the healthcare segment in the context of current scenario? Do you see informatics facilitating its growth?
In India, the IT industry is highly fragmented. Market size is not estimated by independent agencies and a clear picture has not emerged. We estimate the total healthcare market to be anywhere in the range of $60-80 million per annum. We see the market growing rapidly at 20-22% year-on-year. Healthcare IT is in its infancy in India compared to western world. However, investments in healthcare IT still holds a distinct advantage when investments to other healthcare technologies are also happening. The costs are a big barrier as of now and India’s large IT pool can be the answer to bringing costs down. We are expecting IT to change the way healthcare is delivered today, just like the way IT powered other business sectors like banking and telecom.
The IT services are decided based on four elements: Healthcare providers who are looking to provide end-to-end solutions that includes basic administrative IT tools; payers, that is, insurance companies who are looking to automate claim management processes; patients, who need IT to have a better turn-around time or second opinions through online reports and images; and physicians, who are looking for patient data—ready information...
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