Pakistan IT companies to improve healthcare facilities worldwide

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan's IT companies are involved in making advance technology available to health sector to improve the quality of health care worldwide.

Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) along with other IT departments and IT companies are powering the global healthcare industry.

Pakistan-based companies CureMD and ikonami adopted the inside-out approach of creating products in Pakistan for the worldwide market.

CureMD is an award-winning provider of web-based all-in-one healthcare solutions and accompanying services that empower care providers to improve the quality and value of healthcare while optimizing efficiency and portability.

In 2003, CureMD established a captive R&D facility in Lahore, Pakistan and embarked upon developing a suite of products for the US healthcare market that were designed and conceived by

its domain experts, software architects, and designers in the US.

CureMD was also one of only 28 vendors across the US certified by the Centre for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2011 for its EHR solution, allowing it to tap into the multi- billion dollar federal healthcare market.

Ikonami Ltd was acquired by Electric Word plc (AIM: ELE), the specialist information publisher with complementary interests in the healthcare vertical.

Ikonami will be rebranded as Radcliffe Solutions - alongside Electric Word other recent acquisition, Radcliffe Publishing, which primarily focuses on professional development books, journals and training in primary healthcare.

Health information management systems form the core of the healthcare IT and automation movement. A number of healthcare IT companies have particularly targeted this opportunity.

Kabot International (also Kabot Systems) is a key player in this market. It began developing its product suite in 2005 by leveraging the release of US Veteran Affirs' legacy software - Vista -under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Vista - operated by 180,000 healthcare professionals across 170 VA hospitals - is considered as a Gold Standard by the US Government. Kabot's biggest achievement was to adapt this platform for commercial use, especially for Ambulatory Clinics and Physician Offices. Folio3 is a fast growing software services outsourcing company in Pakistan that was part of the All-World Fast Growth Pakistan-25 2010 List. Folio3 also developed capability within the e-Health space.

The National ICT R&D Fund has also funded other capability development projects in the e-Health area, namely, a tele-surgical training robot and simulator, and a remote patient monitoring system. The results of these projects, although preliminary, point towards a growing interest and expertise in Pakistan.