The healthcare services company has changed its patient type segmentation, improved processes and increased revenues topline and bottom-line through digital transformation
SHUVANKAR PRAMANICK
PARAS HEALTHCARE
It has been challenging to change the legacy as well as live infrastructure but it has been done stepwise and planned well. Some of the projects were an additional facility towards the patient which did not affect legacy infrastructure. But we ran some of them parallelly for a scheduled period.
According to an Accenture study, 58 per cent businesses now look to digitisation to help them sell profitably. Still, many enterprises have miles to go in their digital maturity journey. The same study found that 26 per cent companies are “completely ready” to execute digital business strategies. Meanwhile, a study of 422 business executives conducted by YouGov on behalf of Appian found that while business leaders are aware of the need for digital transformation, only 14 per cent have “fully migrated” to all intended areas of their digital transformation plans.
In India, the healthcare sector is growing slowly. Every organisation is looking for standard patient-oriented healthcare information system. Shuvankar Pramanick, CIO, Paras Healthcare, speaks about the time spent thinking about digital transformation and how they can connect and apply data, technology and communication to redefine customer experiences and engagement and redefine business models.
At Paras Healthcare, digital transformation is going on in two ways - internal process and controls from manual to auto mode and optimising the licensing cost by transforming healthcare information system from an old PC-based to mobile hand-held based system (specifically android based system). Patient accessibility of their medical records and/or medical history from patient portal is a major digital transformation. “We are talking to some partners regarding predictive diagnosis of an X-ray/ ultrasound/ CT-MRI. It is interesting because in the healthcare sector, artificial intelligence is an emerging technology. Tele-medicine for corporate customer at their desk is a big step forward for the application of tele-medicine. We are planning to start operations in the coming year,” says Pramanick.
Digital transformation has directly affected the revenue top line as well as bottom-line for the company. Patient type segmentation has changed too. Through application of internal work-flow digitally, application control mechanism and payer-payee bridging, they save major manpower expenses.
Tele-medicine has been a big flop in the Indian system with only a handful of healthcare organisations running it successfully. “Most firms are branding tele-consultation as tele-medicine. I want to plan it appropriately. Artificial intelligence is another aspect we are looking at in the coming year,” Pramanick points out.
Pramanick believes a CIO's role should be more strategic than of an application implementer. Most healthcare organisations use this role as an implementer of various applications. Mobile, BYOD and Cloud-based computing created new challenges for IT departments and will continue to do so. As security issues have increased, the role of a CIO in determining the best course of action to protect the company's customers and employees has expanded. A CIO now leads from the front for digital transformation in the industry.
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