Indian top-tier information technology services companies, who were banking on the recession-proof healthcare sector to tide over uncertainty, are now seeing multi-billion dollar opportunities from the healthcare space in the US, especially the Obama administration’s proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.The chances that US President Obama will achieve a near-universal healthcare system have dramatically improved after a lone Republican, Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, prepared to vote with Democrats for a compromise proposal. This gives Obama a much better chance of achieving the 60 votes he needs to pass a Bill in the Senate.
The plan, which proposes to create Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for all Americans by 2014 with an investment of $20 billion, can open up new vistas of opportunities for Indian IT services firms including Infosys, Wipro, TCS and MindTree in areas of EHR implementations, upgrade, integration and interoperability-related works.
"Obama's stimulus plan proposes to allocate $150 billion to healthcare. Of this, nearly $20 billion is proposed for healthcare IT alone, most of which is expected to be spent on Electronic Health Records. This allocation, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is opening up the healthcare IT market like never before. It is bringing in a host of opportunities for EHR vendors, healthcare IT service providers and hospital systems," says Rajiv Shah, Senior Vice-President, Healthcare Services SBU (strategic business unit), Wipro Technologies.
Other than the EHR implementation and upgrade, he says the proposed Act has brought new opportunities for service providers to engage more closely with EHR vendors, which can open up more strategic partnerships and alliances.
"The Obama administration's healthcare plan will benefit not just Infosys but also many other Indian IT services companies. We see this as an area of significant opportunity for the future, and that is an area where we are investing now. IT will play a significant role in bringing down the healthcare costs as proposed under the plan," agrees S Gopalakrishnan, CEO and MD of Infosys Technologies
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