India has been a prime beneficiary in offshore services and is now on the radar of US healthcare industry for the same, said Gopi Natrajan, co-founder, president and CEO, Omega Healthcare.

There has certainly been a growing dependence by the US healthcare industry in the area of offshore services provided by Indian companies, in the last three to four years. All the apprehensions, that were around, were about India and its workforces’ ability to handle the complex US healthcare processes along with the confidentiality requirements. “Now these problems are viewed as issues of the past. What we are witnessing is the offshore healthcare Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) / Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) segment growth anywhere between 30 to 35 per cent a year,” said the Omega Healthcare India chief in an email interaction with Pharmabiz.

The entire healthcare KPO/BPO market today in India is valued over $300 million and probably the sector employs anywhere between 20,000 to 25,000 people.

In the US, the healthcare industry is the single largest industry of the US GDP and is about $2 trillion in size.

The outsourced market in the healthcare segment is estimated to be around $8 billion. A good portion of this will always remain in the US, but it is quite  safe to state that the market is severely under penetrated and offers great potential and growth for the right companies in India. Some of the other notable companies in this space are Dell/Perot, e4e, GeBBs Healthcare, and Ajuba Healthcare, he pointed out.

“Despite the growth potential, the biggest challenge in my opinion is getting qualified resources to do the complex work that is coming our way.  Educational institutions continue to churn out a lot of graduates but the quality of the students graduating and their knowledge level seems a lot to be desired. Therefore, in India English speaking skills must improve a lot but colleges do not seem to focus on this aspect of human resources development,” he said.

The other big challenge is the Government’s unfriendly business policies and tax changes which will inhibit the growth of the companies and ability to scale. While in the case of other countries, with tax friendly policies and laws, could over the years be more attractive and will start attracting businesses which will pose a serious problem for India, stated Natrajan.