U.S. Healthcare brings Billion dollar business for Indian IT

The US healthcare sector has a hefty business proposition lined up for Indian IT providers. It has extended a multi-billion dollar IT and back-office services opportunity, much bigger than the Y2K opportunity which brought a sea change in the business scenario of Indian IT market. Recent regulatory changes mandating more inclusive healthcare and standardisation in patient records in the US have made the opportunity more attractive and immediate.

Richard S Garnick, whose previous tenure as Wipro's head of the Americas and enterprise application services helped the company's revenue to take a quantum leap of billions from millions, is confident of turning things in the favor of the healthcare sector. ConJoin is the brainchild of Richard which was brought into existence to serve the sole purpose of lending a helping hand to the companies looking for a transformation. It was achieved with the aid of the globalization model. In November 2010, the collective efforts of ConJoin and a private equity firm Actis made way for PHNS, an IT and BPO provider into the US healthcare sector. ConJoin has just got its new moniker 'Anthelio' as the earlier name can leave people befuddled and can mislead them to mix the healthcare sector with 'conjoined twins'

The firm will first explore the U.S. market and then possibly even target Europe. As compared to financial services, the U.S. healthcare sector has been indolent in adopting offshoring and technology. But, it has succumbed to the new economic pressures and government mandates, that has caused the change within it.

According to Garnick, US government investment in the Healthcare Bill is estimated to topple $1 trillion over 10 years. In the next 4-5 years, Garnick expects staff strength to shoot up to 12,000-15, 000. 80% of Back office services could be performed from locations such as India.