JOIN US Philips India, part of the €22.3- billion Koninklijke Philips NV, which holds 50 per cent market share in the healthcare monitoring devices space, plans to harness IT (information technology) for cost-effective and efficient delivery of healthcare in India.
Philips India Healthcare President Sameer Garde told Deccan Herald that the healthcare sector is undergoing dramatic changes with the advent of information technology. “We are observing an evidence-based healthcare system globally. For this we need to analyse patient data. Here, IT-based data analytics plays an important role,” he said.
Garde also pointed out that IT-enabled healthcare offers additional benefits such as increased accessibility, availability, and accuracy.
“Philips India will focus on giving more value addition to healthcare segment by bringing out more solutions which are cost-effective and at the same time technically perfect,” he said.
The Philips India Healthcare president said the company has already shown its capability in bringing out an ECG instrument which can show the graph via a tablet. “Besides reducing the printing cost, the instrument helps doctors to look at data and take prints which are worthy,” he said.
According to a market report published by Transparency Market Research on ‘IT-enabled Healthcare Market — Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014–2020’, the global IT-enabled healthcare market, in terms of revenue, was valued at $ 96.87 billion in 2013 and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 11.8 per cent during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020.
The Indian healthcare market is pegged at $65 billion and of this, the devices, supplies/equipment market is approximately $4.5 billion–$5billion, as per a study by Philips Healthcare.
“Here Philips India Healthcare focuses on its 50 per cent market share in critical healthcare. According to a WHO estimate,there are around 1,50,000 ICUs in the country. For a population of a billion people, it is very low,” he said.
To another query, he said Philips India would like to address the entire spectrum of critical healthcare from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment, recovery and home care, including remote area care.
“We are now focusing more on healthy living and prevention. Also we would like to do more analytics so that time spend in hospital and on medication can be brought down dramatically,” said Garde.
Philips also launched Effica CM series of patient monitors priced from 1,50,0000 onwards, specifically designed for the Indian market. The product is also built for scalability which helps a hospital to add modules rather than buy new equipment every time patient intake increases.