A strong movement to modernise healthcare informatics in India is on with the establishment of Health Level Seven (HL7) India in 2000. HL7 India is a branch of Michigan based informatics major, Health Level Seven.

HL7 is currently focussing on what could perhaps equip India to modernise healthcare informatics. HL7 protocol is already the national healthcare informatics standard in Germany, Netherlands, Australia and USA. There are also over 20 countries having international affiliates including India, Dr. Saji Salam, chairman, Health Level Seven India told Pharmabiz.com.

With the expectations of the industry that the Indian government would adopt HL7 the de-facto healthcare standard in the country, HL7 is well on the track to provide training for software companies along with the latest version of HL7 standards. The affiliate would also voice over India's strength to ensure that it is heard in the global standards development initiative.

"The IT investment in the healthcare is opening up. The basic purpose of HL7 is to help hospitals and investors adapt to worldwide standards for IT in healthcare. This is what we call healthcare informatics," said Dr. Salam. The $40 billion healthcare informatics industry is expected to grow to $60 billion by 2004-2005. Dr. Salam also represents India on the HL7 board.

According to him, India's huge IT know-how is in turn resulting in needless investment into healthcare. "There is absolutely no domain experience and there is no focus on providing practical solutions. The programming knowledge will not work here as you are dealing with lives," he added. So far only eight Indian companies are already affiliated as HL7. This is however, negligible when compared to over 300 members in the US.

Clarifying the myth that HL7 provides software for healthcare, Dr. Salam said that Health Level Seven develops specifications that is most widely used messaging standard that enables disparate healthcare applications to exchange keys sets of clinical and administrative data.

The company is currently focussing on Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which in itself is fast growing to an over $60 billion market by 2004.