Dr Ashish Dhawad, Founder and CEO, Medsynaptic talks to Elets New Networks (ENN) Rajesh K. Sharma about the growth of healthcare IT market and the outlook for RIS/PACS solutions in that growth.
How do you perceive the growth of the healthcare segment in the IT market?
Healthcare IT is a fast growing segment in India and is clocking one of the highest rates of growth across various sectors. A recent Frost & Sullivan report states that the Healthcare IT market will triple from current $ 381 million to $ 1.45 Billion by 2018. This shows how quickly the mindset of healthcare providers is changing regarding adoption and benefits of IT.
By introducing RIS/PACS solution, hospitals are one step closer to being all-digital, thus meeting the need for improving the delivery of care to its patients. Whats your take on this?
PACS is a fantastic solution which not just improves workflow within the hospital and delivery of patient care, but also results in substantial return on investment for the hospital, by reducing films and other consumables. Any hospital which has more than three imaging modalities and moderate study volumes should definitely consider deploying a PACS or MiniPACS. To give an example, using Teleradiology via PACS helps provide critical results from anywhere, anytime during emergencies.
How important is innovation for customers in the growth markets?
Growth market customers love innovation. They are more open to trying out new technologies, as compared to developed market customers, who have already been using solutions for many years and tend to resist changes to established workflows. Many customers in growth markets are first time users of technology and can easily adapt to innovations.
How do you differentiate your products with your clients? Is pricing an important factor?
Our biggest differentiator is our product innovation and the world class service that we offer. Obviously, pricing plays a role in decision making, but customers who value the quality of a product and responsive service consider pricing as secondary. Our continuous focus on improving our PACS and integrating with latest technology trends helps us highlight our USPs to the client and ultimately win projects.
Please tell us about your RIS/ PACS solutions.
Medsynapse PACS is a true webbased solution unlike other solutions in market which are partially web-based. Using latest R&D, we continually keep improving Medsynapse PACS to offer better functionality and technology to our clients and that is why Medsynapse PACS has become popular in such a short time. We were the first in India to offer a true web-based PACS, VNA, integrated collaboration platform, mobile viewing, FFID technology etc. With the latest version we offer many new features like integrated web based MIP/MPR/3D and several other advanced processing tools, dashboards, MIS reports, advanced RIS and intelligent worklist to name a few. The latest version also offers the fastest full fidelity download speeds which is way ahead of the competition. A great innovation we have added is an HTML5 based universal viewer which can be accessed from any device or browser/OS.
So a clear statement, RIS/ PACS are here to stay as part of the overall and ongoing transformation of healthcare?
Absolutely, RIS-PACS is here to stay and will in fact lead the transformation of healthcare, as imaging services form an important part of the overall hospital offering and collections. Plus, RIS/ PACS has clearly demonstrated a return on its investment for any hospital, as compared to other IT projects.
What is your prediction for this market in the next decade in India? What are the growth contributors in the industry?
Healthcare IT market will continue to grow rapidly in the next decade as the healthcare industry matures in India and more hospitals realize the potential benefits of deploying IT. The future is going to be digital and fully inter-connected, and healthcare wont buck that trend. Increasing investments, new hospitals, insurance penetration, regulatory push and manpower shortages will drive this growth in future.
With elections and a possible new government at the Center, what are your expectations from the government for this industry?
Like everyone, even the healthcare industry is waiting for a new stable government to start functioning. I hope the new government will bring in major reforms in the healthcare sector and give a new impetus to improve the growth prospects of the industry. Some specific areas where I would like to see action is a nationwide platform for health record, regulatory guidelines for image archival, incentives to hospitals for adopting healthcare IT and guidelines for interconnectivity between systems
Medsynaptic PACS solutions
Medsynaptic provides its PACS solution in two flavors, a regular PACS and a mini-PACS. Both of these are web-based, and can be accessed from anywhere. Both are described below:
MedSynapse
>> MedSynapse is an indigenously developed web-based and cloud based system. It is USFDA & CE approved as well as HIPAA compliant. It offers multi-modality and multisite hospital connectivity. It has DICOM MWL support, provides consistent image quality and a fast and lossless image transfer. It has a Teleradiology module, VNA Compliant Archiving module along with advanced Reporting features like speech recognition included in it. Data mining capabilities, zero footprint viewer, RT support & MIS reports make it unique from other solutions.
miniSynapse
>> miniSynapse is a web-based low cost and affordable solution designed for diagnostic centers and small hospitals. It is HIPAA compliant as well as USFDA/ CE approved and supports multi-modality connectivity. It comes with image processing tools that provide a consistent image quality. It has a Teleradiology module, an Archiving module and a Reporting module included in it.
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