The use of information technology (IT) for healthcare promotion by pharmaceutical industry and other healthcare sectors is increasing with revolutionary success of internet and mobile usage.
IT provides unlimited opportunity for promoting correct healthcare practices for prevention of many diseases, providing information for maintaining health and other suitable information to the expected target audience.
There is enormous potential for improving the awareness about healthcare through digital media and information technology. IT provides numerous advantages including extended reach, quick dissemination of facts, providing unlimited amount of information and also eliminates the need of large number of manual resources.
As far as India is concerned, the adoption of IT would give an impetus for growth for the healthcare. Indian healthcare is currently experiencing a steady growth because of increase in life expectancy, higher income levels, greater reach of health insurance, and growing lifestyle-related diseases.
The sector is at an inflection point and is poised for rapid growth in the medium term. However, the downbeat factors are that India accounts for 17 per cent of global population and the expenditure on healthcare system and infrastructure are still the lowest among the growing economies.
Only IT makes healthcare safer for the country and affordable to patients, noted experts at the Bangalore Indian Bio held early this year.
Patient records must be scanned on how drugs prescribed and administered besides keep tabs on the adverse drug reactions. Current advances includes addition of sensors cell phones to monitor health. Good medical care must be affordable to people and this is where e efficient IT implementation is mandated. This has led to the emergence of leading information technology players in the country like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, IBM and Cognizant among others along with well-known technology enterprises including Alten Calsoft Labs' Blue Star Infotech.
According to Dr. Devi Prasad Shetty, chairman Narayana Health, IT in healthcare was seen to ensure safer for hospitals and affordable to the patient.
Around 60 per cent of the patient who suffer from cardiac problem from rural areas were able to access facilities only with the power of IT. Our hospital's ECG network can touch base remotely with around 53,000 people The launch of "I-Care" enhances the safety of a patient in the ICU and in avoiding wrong medications. For instance in the case of patients in Cayman Island are remotely monitored from Florida and all this is possible with IT. The main goal of IT in medical care is to control the cost and hospitals located in the rural areas can achieve efficiency only with IT. These are some ways that can improve health care, said Dr. Shetty.
The future of healthcare lies in solutions like the telemedicine, tele-radiology and telephysics which helps the patient to be treated within 24 hours. While India is the most cost efficient country for healthcare yet 60% of patient care is eroded due to the cost and affordable treatment. This is where IT solutions in hospitals could provide quality, high end care with cost effectiveness, said Dr. B S Ajaikumar,chairman, Health Care Global Enterprises.
Gauging the opportunities in the market, Alten Calsoft Labs' developed a proprietary framework Connected Healthcare to give a fillip to the Indian healthcare industry in many ways. The areas with higher potential of growth leveraging the technologies are Hospital Management Systems, Telemedicine Systems, Patient Health Records and Laboratory Information Systems.
Particularly in the healthcare space, customer intelligence plays a critical role because it allows hospitals to have a better understanding of market demand among the patient population. Healthcare providers could ensure a return on investment (ROI) using customer intelligence tools. Hospitals would look to offer customised services with reduced response time only to
meet total patient expectations. This in turn will lead hospitals achieve market leadership and sustained revenue generation. This is where Blue Star Infotech is working to spur the adoption of Customer intelligence, a type of application software based on the model of business intelligence is adopted extensively across industries to enhance decision making , Susmita Nandi, Practice Manager - Analytics, Blue Star Infotech.
In February this year, C -Square, the pharma, retail and healthcare software solutions provider has now bagged a Government of India project where it has installed its EcoGreen at the free generic drug pharmacy located within the All India Institute of Medical Science (AIMS), New Delhi. The project is executed through Hindustan Latex Ltd., for AIIMS.
In the meanwhile venture capital (VC) funding in the healthcare IT sector more than doubled with $1.8 billion raised in 161 deals, a 104 per cent increase compared to the $861 million raised in Q1 2014. Ten of those deals were for more than $50 million each,according to a report by Mercom Capital Group, a global communications and consulting firm.
The $2.6 billion raised so far this year has already exceeded the $2.2 billion raised in all of 2013. There were 263 investors that participated in these funding rounds, with 58 angel investors including some well-known celebrities and entrepreneurs. The quarter also included 30 corporate venture capitalists.
“It was a quarter of several milestones. It was the first billion dollar fund-raising quarter for the healthcare IT sector which has now raised almost $7 billion in venture funding since 2010. M&A deals were also at their highest levels this quarter, while mobile health companies continued to outraise other technologies,” commented Raj Prabhu, CEO and Co-Founder of Mercom Capital Group.
Practice-centric companies received 61 per cent of all VC investments in the second quarter of 2014, with $1.1 billion in 61 deals. Areas that received the most funding under this category were practice management with $220 million in eight deals, data analytics with $204 million in nine deals, population health management with $144 million in four deals.
Consumer-centric companies received $678 million in 100 deals, with the majority of the funding again going into the mobile health category ($401 million in 45 deals). Within mobile health, $129 million went to 23 companies developing Apps, $226 million went to 17 companies developing wearables. Personal health companies received $115 million in 23 deals and scheduling, rating & shopping companies received $61 million in 12 deals. There were 38 early-stage deals under $2 million in Q2.
The top VC funding deals over $100 million in Q2 2014 were the $135 million raise by NantHealth, a cloud-based healthcare IT company delivering care through a single integrated clinical platform, from the sovereign wealth fund, Kuwait Investment Authority and BlackBerry, the $130 million raise by Flatiron Health, a developer of a cloud-based business and clinical intelligence oncology data platform, from Google Ventures, First Round Capital and Laboratory Corporation of America, the $125 million raised by Alignment Healthcare, a provider of population health management solutions, from General Atlantic, and the $120 million raise by Proteus Digital Health, a developer of products and services integrating medicines with ingestible sensors, wearable sensors, mobile and cloud computing, from undisclosed institutional investors in the United States, Europe and Asia
Globally, US companies raised $1.6 billion from 140 of the $1.8 billion total and 161 deals. Thirteen other countries recorded at least one deal apiece.
In the United States, 47 deals came out of California, followed by New York which recorded 12 deals, Massachusetts with eight deals, and Texas and Tennessee with seven deals each. Among cities, San Franciso had the highest number of funding deals among cities with 18 followed by New York with 11. In terms of dollars the order was reversed with New York coming out on top with $247 million, followed by San Francisco with $206 million.
There were a record number of M&A transactions in the healthcare IT sector in Q2 2014, with 57 transactions (12 disclosed) compared to 54 transactions (six disclosed) in Q1 2014. Health information management companies saw the most M&A activity this quarter with 20 transactions, followed by revenue cycle management and service providers with 11 transactions each, and mobile health and personal health companies with six transactions each.
Of the top five M&A transactions, the largest was the $550 million leveraged buyout of ABILITY Network, a provider of web-based work-flow solutions that aid clinical and administrative tasks for acute and post-acute healthcare providers, by Summit Partners, a growth equity investment firm. This was followed by the $532.5 million acquisition of Evolution, a provider of payment solutions to healthcare companies, by WEX, a provider of corporate payment solutions. St Jude Medical, a medical device company, acquired privately held CardioMEMS, provider of a wireless sensing and communication technology designed to improve management of chronic cardiovascular diseases, for nearly $450 million. Other top disclosed transactions were the $225 million acquisition of ISG Holdings, which through its subsidiaries, provides medical bill review and managed care programmes for the workers compensation industry, by xerox, followed by the $150 million acquisition of Corventis, provider of a wearable technology with a focus on cardiovascular devices used for remote patient monitoring, by Medtronic, a medical-device company.
Announced debt and public market financing in healthcare IT amounted to $1.5 billion in five deals in Q2 2014, compared to $343 million in six deals in Q1 2014.
There were two healthcare IT IPOs in Q2 2014, bringing in a combined $1.4 billion. IMS Health, a provider of information services and technology for the healthcare industry, raised $1.3 billion through its IPO in April and Imprivata, a provider of authentication and access management security solutions for the healthcare industry launched an IPO that raised $86.3 million.
Total corporate funding in the healthcare IT sector, including VC, accelerator/incubator, debt, and public market financing, in Q2 2014 came in at $3.3 billion.
According to an earlier Mercom report ,venture capital funding in the healthcare IT sector almost doubled last year to $ 2.2 billion, from $ 1.2 billion in 2012.
The global communications and consulting firm had pointed out that there was an increase in the number of transactions as well. There were 571 deals last year, as against 163 deals in 2012.
"After record fund-raising totals in 2013, Healthcare IT companies have now received $ 4 billion in venture funding since 2010," Raj Prabhu had said.
"Mobile health companies led the way in 2013 as the technology transformation of the healthcare industry continues," he added.
They were the largest recipient of VC funding, raising $ 564 million, while personal health companies received $ 198 million and social health companies brought in $ 166 million. The M&A activity in the healthcare IT sector remained flat in 2013, with 165 transactions compared to 163 transactions in 2012.