NIIT Technologies, a leading IT solutions organization, has acquired an electronic health records and referral management platform to initiate its foray into the lucrative healthcare segment in the US. The platform called 'Preferr' (Patient Referral System) enables seamless collaboration between all providers namely physicians, hospitals diagnostic facilities, and laboratories.

The US Government through American Recovery and Reinvestment Bill of 2009 (ARRA), has mandated physicians to focus on providing better patient care through Electronic Health Record (her) sharing amongst hospitals and other specialists. “Preferr' improves continuity and quality of care for the patient and improves operational efficiencies for all practices.

Arvind Thakur, CEO, NIIT Technologies, said, “The acquisition of “Preferr” is our first step to provide solutions in healthcare IT. The platform enables providers to meet federal guidelines for her meaningful use criteria and will enable us to established our presence in the healthcare arena.”

The IT spending by healthcare providers in increasing very fast and according to analysts it touched to $85 billion in 2010. A substantial portion of this spend will be towards EHR/EMR solutions adoption by providers, which will further accelerate due to the time-based incentives provided by the government reforms in US.

“Preferr: was introduced as white labeled solution by NIIT Technologies prior to acquiring the IP and has since been adopted by a number of healthcare providers in Central Florida as a tool to manager patient referrals and information exchange between physicians, hospitals, outpatient facilities and laboratories.

The platform is an innovative SaaS-based IP that collaborates between various care entities by enhancing the portability, re-usability, integrity and history of health records” said Dhmu Narabanan, head of the recently formed Healthcare Practice at NIIT Technologies. “Being a SaaS-based platform, it operates on the cloud whereby in addition to ease in collaboration, it also is a green IT initiative that will help healthcare providers reduce their carbon footprint.”