The Hindu Business Line : iSoft scales up Chennai facility; eyes healthcare markets abroad

SOFTWARE applications company iSoft has scaled up its facility across the three locations in Chennai. The area has doubled to 80,000 square feet in the last three months.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Arunav Sinha, Manager (Corporate Communications), said that the group identified Chennai as the hub of research and development and had committed to invest $100 million in infrastructure and technology. (iSoft is a UK-headquartered company. It was KPMG's healthcare arm, but has since been floated as a separate company.)

"The Chennai centre is involved in conceiving, manufacturing and developing healthcare products. Lorenzo incidentally is the flagship product," he said and explained that the product focussed on the people and not the system. The company has close to 15 products, which have either been developed or acquired as a legacy. "Our focus is on innovation; in developing the product and partnering with the client during the implementation."

iSoft, Mr Sinha said, was looking at countries like the UK, Germany and Australia, where healthcare modernisation was taking place. "In these countries, healthcare is patient-centric, rather than insurance-centric as in the United States." According to him, Lorenzo enhanced the flow of the healthcare process. The company is working on the second release of the product.

"For the citizen, the service emphasis will focus on mass broadcast technologies such as digital interactive TV and mobile phones combined with extremely high levels of intuitive usability that require no training. Take a diabetic patient for instance. He can forget to take the medicine on time or can run out on insulin. The digital interactive television actually alerts the patient on such issues, which can at times appear inconsequential. Digitised TV has become mandatory in the UK," he said.

Mr Sinha added that the company's dedicated focus on healthcare markets ensured that it was best positioned to supply leading edge application systems for both private and public sectors in line with the healthcare reform agenda. "The company is geared to deploy new technologies rapidly, whilst delivering maximum return on investment from existing products."

On recruitment, he said the team size at present is 900. The company is planning to increase the number on its rolls to 1,100 within the next two to three months.