There are opportunities galore to tap the healthcare segment for cloud services

Ravikumar Murugesan points out that many institutions in India have realized
the importance of IT to deliver high quality healthcare to a significant number
of residents and tourists

With IT today moving from being an add-on to a necessity in healthcare,
how would you describe the scene in India, in comparison with the world?


Healthcare is one of the largest sectors in India in terms of revenue and
employment. This sector is expanding rapidly with more than 80 percent of
private sector investment. There is enormous opportunity for significant growth
with the private sector spending potential. The increase in demand is due to the
increase in population and expanding middle-class segment. On the other hand,
the current situation is that there is a rise in infectious and chronic diseases
warranting more control management through information technology. So far India
has not kept pace with the infrastructure advancement in healthcare in
comparison with the other parts of the world. There are many institutions in
India that have realized the importance of IT to deliver high quality healthcare
to a significant number of residents and for healthcare tourists. With increase
in demand and investment potential from both private and public segments it is
likely to take-off in the coming years.

Do you think the cost factor is a deterrent in this scenario?

Adoption of any new technology requires a huge initial investment and by the
time the technology matures the cost factor will reduce shortening the RoI
period. There are several other challenges like skilled resources to manage and
maintain these technolo­gies, etc, which could contribute to the investment
requirement. India has always been a sensitive market when it comes to cost and
high costs have always been a very crucial factor for technology adoption. But
now the healthcare scenario is slowly changing and the providers have begun to
understand that cost cannot be compromised when it comes to enabling vital IT
systems for hospitals or to provide a structured organizational network.

The global industry is now talking of moving to the cloud. What is your
take on this? What are the advantages the cloud would offer?

Cloud has several advantages over regular software delivery mechanisms. It
provides users with access to virtual super computing environment which can
scale to huge transaction volumes. With the right implementation, cloud
computing can be the best option to grow capacity, deliver desired perfor­mance,
and with high degree of fault tolerance, all without the knowledge of the
underlying infrastructure This approach also eliminates the need to maintain one
or many large datacenters and saves on the capita­lization of assets. As an
enterprise healthcare solutions provider who needs to publish services in the
cloud, a lot of security aspects need to be thought through. Data needs to be
secure both while in transmission and in storage (especially considering storage
is not fully controlled). So, apart from application security like encryption,
etc we need to ensure that the cloud infrastructure vendor has the right blend
of regulatory compliance and security models. iSOFT's Lorenzo already exists as
a huge private cloud network in the NHS, UK and is running through a single
datacenter. In due course, there will be one copy of Lorenzo running through the
entire UK. Meanwhile, eHIS is supporting the armed forces hospitals network in
Oman through satellite facilities.

In a recessionary environment, what is in store for companies moving
towards the cloud?

Infrastructure saving is one of the most important areas during the
recessionary environment since Software as a Service (SaaS) model can bring
significant savings over the traditional deployment model. Interestingly, the
virtualization techno­logy had proved its benefit in maxi­mizing the
infrastructural utilization and Storage as a Service (StaaS) model has gained
its popularity in recent times. The cloud can bring all of this together and
offers the flexibility to choose from a variety of the combi­nations with
private, public and external cloud. This will give the enterprise the edge in
reducing their operating cost to rework their offering price to sustain their
sales.

Could you elaborate on the kind of compliance and security requirements
that need to be in place for healthcare providers to adopt public cloud?


Irrespective of the sector, the security and compliance are common when it comes
to cloud. From basic access to the information that is in cloud to how it is
consumed needs to be assessed before venturing in. The cloud model demands an
additional security and data protection especially for the healthcare industry.
Data transfer between a local client and a remote server needs to be secured.
Data privacy is a huge challenge, especially due to government regulation such
as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Many
countries have policies regarding record-keeping, including the physical
location of medical data. With all these challenges the adoption of cloud in
healthcare industry has a long way to go forward in that space. It is necessary
to make healthcare cloud globally connected in the IT scenario. For that, a
considerable amount of resources, responsibility and expertise are required in
order to drive standardization, collaboration and better patient care. Being the
leader in healthcare IT iSOFT needs to create a consortium to drive these
standards along with partners involved.

What is the market opportunity for cloud services in healthcare globally
and in India?

There are many opportunities that cloud can offer for healthcare, especially
in the areas like decision support system, terminology services, medication
manage­ment, medical knowledge mashups, clinical research, medical networks,
etc. The concerns here are whether the hospitals and clinics will be satisfied
if their important data is stored offsite. In India, some major players in the
field are looking to build their own private networks. Theoretically, the
definition of the cloud is to cover availability any­where within a particular
organization's network. Initially, private cloud is more likely to be adopted
compared to public cloud where the hospital has to share the data externally.
The concept needs to be developed further in countries outside the US. Providing
world-class solutions along with increased value of the organization's goal will
be crucial in the Indian market.

What are your plans for the Indian market, specific to cloud offerings?

When it comes to India the current healthcare focus is only in the urban
areas which are riding the modernization wave in healthcare. With the current
increase in usage and availability of technologies like telecommunication,
networks, etc, the focus has to be shifted to more remote/rural community
healthcare which will increase the scope of our offerings and services through
cloud. Although iSOFT does not have a cloud service currently, we want to be an
early entrant in the field by offering high-quality software at an available
cost. iSOFT is aiming to launch cloud computing services this year. Our products
eHIS and Lorenzo are thin client browser-based applications which can be easily
cloud enabled. We are in the process of building one or two reference sites.
Once we can prove the benefits of cloud computing in India, we will launch and
market our cloud services aggressively in the global market.

Sanjeev Ramachandran

(Source: CIOL)