What are the career opportunities in the healthcare outsourcing sector with regard to the Indian job market?
Healthcare BPM is a major opportunity for people with different healthcare profiles in India. The high-end healthcare contracts that are being outsourced to India are creating a demand for actuaries, medical coders, medical writers and biostatisticians, thereby providing healthcare professionals such as physiotherapists, nurses, general physicians, ayurvedic and homeopathic practitioners with an opportunity to be a part of the global information technology industry.
Why is there a greater demand for healthcare IT?
With the penetration of technology across all sectors including healthcare today and the incorporation of recent healthcare reforms in the U.S. such as Obama care and the IC9 to ICD 10 conversion, the healthcare industry today has witnessed a huge need for specialised healthcare IT professionals. The dominion of technology in healthcare, both on the medical and the process front, has opened up tremendous avenues of growth and demand for healthcare IT, thus enabling the information technology movement worldwide garner attention.
What specialisations are there in the industry?
Healthcare as an industry is highly specialised both in terms of processes as well as talent. With respect to healthcare information and technology management, areas for specialisation include medical coding, medical writing, bio-statics, healthcare and data analytics.
What is the kind of specialised talent the U.S. market is looking for?
Owing to the advances in the U.S. healthcare information management system, the demand for capable IT specialists from India is growing constantly. Experts in project management, programme management and medical coding are highly in demand. The adoption of high end technology for information processing has consequently raised the demand for analysts today.
Which institutes offer courses that would open up opportunities for entering into this profession?
I have failed to recognise any Indian institute that offers specific graduate courses for medical coding or analytics in India. On a corporate level, organisations like Ajuba and others have incorporated training mechanisms to equip their employees with industry-based skill sets. The concern here is that there is a higher demand than there is availability. Therefore organisations are today ready to invest in campuses to train the talent interested in being part of this growing industry. Organisations are also looking at partnering with institutions in the near future to mould industry-ready candidates to meet the rising demand in specialised healthcare profiles as mentioned above.
