T.E. Raja Simhan

Chennai, Feb. 25 IBA Health, an Australian information technology company, will increase its focus in India on selling healthcare solutions.

So far, it has been focussing on software development out of India, and also has a few clients such as Artemis Hospital of the Apollo Tyres in Gurgaon and Satya Sai Hospitals in Bangalore and Puttaparthi.

It now plans to increase the India presence by targeting hospitals in both private and public sectors. It has set up a specific country unit in India, and this will be a division of the company, Mr S. Govind, Managing Director, IBA Health India, told Business Line.

The total healthcare sector market in India is pegged at around $25 billion, and 3-5 per cent of this amount is spent on information technology systems such as electronic medical record and networking of a group’s hospitals.

The market for IT systems in hospitals is still at its infancy, but will grow fast. The reasons include opening up of medical tourism and healthcare insurance, he said.

Mr Govind said private sector hospitals would continue to spend more on IT. However, hospitals under the public sector organisations would be the first among the government sector to spend on IT, he said.

Currently, around 11 per cent of the company’s $424 million comes from Asia, he said.

Mr Govind said the recent acquisition of iSoft, a UK-based IT company, helped IBA to have a talent pool of around 1,500 technology and development specialists working in India of iSoft.

The integration of operations of both the companies is over globally.

The company will close down its disaster recovery centre (of iSoft) in Hyderabad and move operations from there to Chennai and Bangalore. Around 100 employees in Hyderabad will be moved to two cities, he said.

IBA Health will expand its Bangalore centre with a new 500-seat capacity facility. At present, the company has around 270 employees in Bangalore and 1,150 in Chennai.

On attrition, Mr Govind said it declined to around 22 per cent compared with nearly 30 per cent when iSoft was acquired.

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