Anthelio eyes Indian healthcare market

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Anthelio, the US-headquartered IT solutions and business process services company for the healthcare industry, plans to enter the Indian market next year and is already in talks with a few hospitals.

The firm, which has its facility in Hyderabad, is currently engaged in research to figure out the best solutions for healthcare providers in India.

"It may take six to eight months for us to figure out the best solutions. We are expecting something for the Indian market in 2013," Vish Sivaswamy, head, Global Practices, Anthelio Business Technologies, told IANS.

The company is already in talks with a few hospitals, including a 1,000-bed hospital. They want economically good solutions. We have to find out what they are, he said.

Anthelio, which is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has over 2,000 employees in the US and in India, is also looking at the European market. It recognises the fact that the requirements for both Indian and European markets are different from the US market, which it is currently serving.

Sivaswamy points out that the use of IT in the Indian healthcare sector is limited as the country is focusing more on reaching medical technology to people.

A good electronic health record system in the US will cost anywhere between $10 million and $30 million. In India, you can build 10 hospitals with that money, he said.

Unlike the US where the healthcare system is focused on the clinical side of the data like maintaining the background of a patient and using the data for research, the outlook of hospitals in India is limited to using IT for registration of patients, billing and insurance.

As the government of India is thinking of digitizing the health records of citizens through universalisation of unique identification (UID), Anthelio is ready to work with the government to evolve the best system.

"We know how the US system works. The question is how do we use clinical data of a person throughout his life, who should own it, should it be hospital, the state agencies or a separate authority. There is lot of discussion going on. Unless that comes to some shape, we may not know what are the right technology solutions for Indian market."

In the US, hospitals own and keep the data while in Britain it is the state which owns and maintains it.

Formerly known as ConJoin in India, the company was re-branded as Anthelio following acquisition of a company in Dallas in 2010. It has multiple locations in the US and two locations in India at Hyderabad and Mumbai.

The Hyderabad facility, which has 470 employees, supports healthcare business, which contributes to 98 percent the company's business.

Two-thirds of the company's business is IT, while a third comes from business processes.

Seventy five to 80 per cent employees at Anthelio's Hyderabad facility have some kind of clinical background or clinical-technology expertise.

They include physicians, physiotherapists, a couple of homoeopaths and dentists, all trained in technology.