The healthcare industry is the third largest contributor to the Indian economy in terms of revenue and employment. It is currently worth around $100 billion and is expected to reach $280 billion by 2020, at a compound annual growth rate of 22.9 per cent.
Healthcare, like other industries in the economy, has also undergone a transformation from being a technology-deprived sector to a technology-oriented sector. It has witnessed a growing uptake of information and communication technologies (ICT) such as internet of things (IoT), big data analytics, cloud consulting and mobile health (m-health), although it is still at a nascent stage. This can be attributed to the privatisation of healthcare, a shift towards patient-driven healthcare and the increased usage of mobile applications in the country. In addition, a number of technology-based healthcare start-ups have mushroomed in the industry.
Key ICT applications in healthcare
Owing to the rise in smartphone penetration and the number of internet users, the healthcare industry has witnessed an increase in the adoption of m-health. M-health primarily comprises mobile appli-cations that connect doctors to patients and enable remote consultations between them. One of the key m-health applications available today is MOTECH (Mobile Technology for Community Health), a portal developed by the Grameen Foundation and launched by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. It includes two portals, Mobile Academy and Kilkari. While under Kilkari, pregnant women and new mothers are called to deliver crucial health information as per their stage of pregnancy or their infant’s age, Mobile Academy uses interactive voice response messages on mobile phones to train health workers in maternal and infant care. Another m-health application, UpToDate helps both doctors and nurses to gain evidence-based clinical answers to any question. The application can be downloaded on smartphones and does not require an internet connection. Although it has recently been introduced in India, it is already being used by over 10,000 medical professionals. Further, many public hospitals including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Postgradu-ate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Christian Medical College, Vellore as well as private healthcare providers like Manipal hospital are using this application. Several other smartphone applications that can be used as clinical calculators and decision-support tools, and can help in prognosis, and guiding treatment and dosage of medicines are also coming up in the country.
Meanwhile, a number of healthcare en-terprises are increasingly leveraging IoT technology, which finds several applications in the industry. It can enable enterprises to use real-time location services to track the devices used for treating patients. Medical apparatus and devices such as wheelchairs, scales, defibrillators, nebulisers, pumps and monitoring equipment can be tagged with sensors and located easily with the help of IoT technology. It also enables doctors to predict the movements of patients who are recuperating in the post-anaesthesia care unit and monitor their health status in real time. It can be deployed in hand hygiene monitoring systems, which help in detecting the degree of cleanliness of a healthcare worker. The hygiene monitoring system operates in real time and if a clinician comes near a patient’s bed without washing his or her hands, the device starts buzzing.
Another important application of IoT in healthcare is remote health monitoring. Under this, devices fitted with sensors notify the concerned healthcare providers whenever there is any change in the vital organs of a person. These devices are capable of applying complex algorithms and analysing them rapidly to ensure the patient receives proper attention and medical care. Therefore, remote health monitoring helps reduce patients’ length of hospital stay and even hospital readmission.
Further, the increase in the amount of medical data available has opened up new avenues for healthcare analytics. The adoption of big data analytics is helping enterprises in conducting analysis for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of ailments as well as for follow-up care. Big data analytics enables enterprises to examine the intersection of lifestyle and disease by using devices and applications that monitor chronic diseases and create data. The direct transmission of data from devices offers higher accuracy as compared to self-reported lifestyle data. Further, the compilation and analysis of data leads to more effective diagnosis and a higher likelihood of a successful treatment. Besides, advanced data analysis techniques that synthesise and summarise key research enable doctors to undertake personalised care without spending hours looking for information. Big data can also assist with follow-ups and long-term care by predicting which patients are likely to follow their doctor’s advice, thus preventing relapse or the readmission of vulnerable patients.
Another technology that is being adopted by some healthcare companies is cloud consulting. This technology allows hospitals and doctors to acquire, store, process and secure patient data on the cloud. This data is then made accessible through a simple mobile interface. Hospitals such as Max Healthcare are already using the technology in India. It allows the hospital to securely connect an archive of medical information such as radiology images, lab reports and patient charts with the smartphones of clinicians. This reduces the turnaround time and helps treat a higher number of patients.
Challenges in ICT adoption
Although ICT is being rapidly adopted in the Indian healthcare sector, there are several challenges that are impeding its growth in the sector. The key among them are security issues pertaining to patient information. Healthcare enterprises seldom have any software or infrastructure to protect their database from cyberattacks, which can disrupt patient information. Therefore, a mobile storage and retrieval system that is capable of handling such sensitive data and resilient to outside intrusions and other security threats needs to be developed. Further, some healthcare devices and applications are difficult to use or implement and hinder the work of doctors and other staff members, thereby negating any gains in efficiency.
Another major challenge is the lack of in-house IT domain knowledge required for the adoption of ICT in healthcare companies. Healthcare service providers also face several problems while designing and implementing healthcare management systems. This is because different healthcare organisations have different software requirements, which depend on the size of the hospital, management systems and infrastructure. Hence, a high degree of customisation is required, with specific software programs for each organisation. To this end, certain common designing standards that satisfy the requirements of most healthcare enterprises need to be developed in the country. While these are employed in the US, Indian healthcare is yet to witness the development of such standards.
The way forward
Going forward, the healthcare industry is likely to experience a spurt in the adoption of e-commerce in the retail medicine sales market, which is expected to be worth around $55 billion in 2020.
Further, telemedicine, which includes consultation through mobile devices using video, images and audio channels, is expected to gain traction in the coming years. The medical infrastructure in the country is concentrated in the urban areas, but a substantial section of the population lives in rural areas, with limited access to such facilities. Telemedicine can help in bridging this gap. The healthcare industry is also expected to witness an increase in the adoption of electronic health records (EHR) technology, which maintains medical records on the cloud platform. With the adoption of EMR, healthcare data analytics will prove to be a game changer in the way ailments are diagnosed, monitored and treated.
Another trend that has made a mark in the industry is the emergence of wearable devices. Such devices enable patients to monitor their own health by tracking their fitness levels, sleeping patterns, etc. Many companies are launching wearables to reduce health insurance expenses. The demand for such devices is expected to grow in the future and will be driven by the rising cases of diabetes and other chronic conditions that require constant, round-the-clock monitoring and check-ups.
Thus, as the healthcare industry trends towards digitisation, enterprises in the industry are likely to significantly step up their IT investments. The need for better monitoring and diagnosis of diseases as well as better patient care will drive the adoption of new IT solutions in this space.
