Providing healthcare in a country with 1.3 billion people is a big job. Not everyone can make it to a doctor’s office, and even if they could, that volume of patients is hardly manageable. That’s why in India, focus is increasingly falling on investments in healthcare IT to promote remote care like e-health and telemedicine, as a way to manage the growing healthcare sector.
This focus on IT is driving a CAGR of 14.02 percent from 2014-2019 in the Healthcare IT Market in India.
Today, we wanted to take a look at some of the top reasons that healthcare IT is gaining ground in India through a variety of e-health and remote care initiates, and what effect this is expected to have on the market in the country.
E-Health
A bit part of actually being able to get healthcare to a population this big will be e-health.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, state governments, and ISRO have all taken on significant roles in improving e-health facilities in India.
It kind of goes without saying that IT plays a major role in e-health, so this emphasis on bolstering e-health facilities will directly contribute to the growth of healthcare IT in the country.
National-level health IT programs are being used in India with the help of technology and data gathering tools, and programs such as point-of-care in rural areas and urban areas, treatment compliance, disease surveillance, and distance medical education are enabling and expanding the reach of healthcare services. A few of these programs are described below.
Growing Focus on Telemedicine
Telemedicine is an integration between IT and telecommunications, which allows governments and healthcare professional to provide healthcare services in remote areas. Telemedicine is becoming a huge trend in India, and it is helping to eliminate geographical barriers and increase access to medical services in distant and rural parts of the country. As investments in internet and broadband technologies increase, telemedicine is set to grow significantly as well.
Increased Adoption of Mobile Technologies
Healthcare service providers in India are adopting mobile health to reach out to patients and customers in remote areas, in order to offer them high-quality health services.
When you consider that, in 2014, the mobile subscriber base in India was more than 800 million, the use of mobile devices for m-health will be an effective way to increase access to care in India.
However, while mobile penetration in urban areas is more than 65 percent, it is still less than 15 percent in rural areas. This might seem like bad news at first, but it also represents huge growth potential for the market. TechNavio analysts forecast that the adoption of mobile devices in the health industry in India will reach nearly 1 billion by 2017, and this, coupled with the launch of 4G and government initiatives like “digital India” will boost market growth in the coming years.
