VMware, a leader in virtualisation and cloud infrastructure is making a entry into healthcare space in India and in the SAARC countries. The scores of hospitals in the region are now keen to reduce expenses in information technology investments and opt for efficient, secure and robust model to improve service quality and delivery.

The company has seen healthcare providers being receptive to improve the cost, quality and delivery of patient care by consolidating existing data centers, enabling mobile access to electronic medical records (EMRs), securing sensitive patient information, and delivering robust patient-care applications and services.

Moreover, the recent VMware Cloud Index survey, commissioned in 11 Asia-Pacific countries by Forrester Consulting and ITR (in Japan), revealed a surge in cloud usage in India with 50 per cent of the respondents stating that they have already adopted cloud solutions which indicated a 25 per cent growth over last year. An additional 30 per cent of respondents planned to deploy cloud solutions within the next 18 months. “This indicated the growing cloud opportunity in India and the potential to generate a double digit rate of adoption,” T Srinivasan, managing director, VMware India & SAARC told Pharmabiz in an interaction.

For healthcare providers of all sizes, VMware solutions change fragmented, legacy IT systems into agile computing environments, which in turn accelerate quality connected care.

A visible trend is that healthcare providers, insurance and life sciences companies are looking to integrate disparate systems and accelerate economies-of-scale. The focus is also to strengthen information security.

“Now we could ease the transition from paper-based to electronic systems for integrated delivery networks, hospitals, clinics and public health organizations while modernizing and preserving existing IT infrastructure and application investments. With proven virtualisation and cloud solutions, our expertise enables healthcare providers and related sectors to reduce IT cost and complexity while improving service quality and delivery,” he added.

With virtualisation, VMware helps healthcare providers to build healthcare cloud, improving overall compliance, privacy and security in electronic health records (EHRs), among others. New systems can be rapidly and securely implemented on robust virtualized platforms or via an infrastructure-as-a service (IaaS) or software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

Based on open standards, VMware solutions are widely supported by leading hardware and software vendors including Allscripts, Cerner, DR Systems, Epic, Fujifilm Medical, McKesson, Meditech, Siemens and Vital Images.

The parent company based out of US has 400,000 customers and 55,000 partners. Its clientele from India include Dr Reddy's, Hinduja Hospital, Deenanath Mangeshkar Hospital, among others. Ending 2011 the company has revenues to the tune of $3.77 billion. The company also offers a training programme which is recognised globally as it provides the exclusive ‘VMware Certified’ logos on business cards giving candidates the much-needed recognition.

In the current tough economic environment, with declining budgets, IT is expected to do more with less. With cost, resource, and time pressures, healthcare sector need to ensure innovation, while meeting service level agreements (SLAs). This could only be achieved with a virtualised infrastructure as provides immediate, tangible and quantifiable cost savings from the data centre to the desktop, stated the VMware India chief.