Healthcare providers in India to spend $1.2 on IT-products and services

According to the research firm Gartner, healthcare providers in India are likely to spend a whopping $1.2 billion on IT products and services in the year 2015. The amount shows an increase of 7 percent over 2014, with the major spending being done by the private sector in ICT.

The report envisages huge spending by healthcare sector, including service providers such as hospitals, ambulatory service and physician’s practices. This ICT investment has been clearly categorized into investments in internal services, software, IT services, data centre, devices and telecom services.

The Indian healthcare ICT market will majorly be driven by the private sector with a focused interest on providing better IT-led services in tertiary specialised care, and secondary hospital care. The government healthcare infrastructure will also lead the growth with investments on core public health and primary care across several states.

"IT services, which includes consulting, implementation, IT outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO), will be the largest overall spending category throughout the forecast period within the health care providers sector," said Anurag Gupta, research vice president at Gartner.

"It is expected to reach $334 million in 2015, growing seven percent over 2014. The BPO sub-segment will record the fastest growth rate of 15 percent over 2014. ITO will be the largest sub-segment in IT services recording a 10 percent increase in 2015 to reach $103 million in 2015," he added.

According to the report, the software market is slated to grow 6.7 percent in 2015 to reach $102 million -- up from $96 million in 2014.

Vertical specific software (VSS), which includes hospital information system, electronic health/ medical records, health information management, patient financial management, and more, is expected to grow six percent in 2015 to reach $28 million, it added.