Right Prescription

Keeping pace with the changing demands may prove to be the lifeline for healthcare KPOs.

With globalisation since the early 90’s, there was a remarkable shift in the way companies operated. More investments were made in sustaining the existing businesses and efforts were made to scale them up. According to an independent study, in the late 1990s, there was considerable growth in the IT and BPO sectors in developing countries. This was driven by companies in the developed world who found it prudent to save costs by using lower cost resources. Due to this, many multinational companies were motivated to opt for and experiment with outsourcing high-end knowledge-based work. All these are factors indicative of an industry that is here to stay despite many an obituary written of it.

For the healthcare KPO industry, domain expertise is the key factor countries use to differentiate themselves. For instance, the Philippines with its long history of US influence, has the advantage of a good English accent that matches the requirements of the US, and hence voice-related business is mostly offshore there. However, analytical skills have been India’s greatest strength and this promoted our country as the hub for medical coding and data analytics.

A NASSCOM report highlights that countries that will emerge as strong contenders in the KPO business are also those that have a large number of engineers, medical doctors, graduates in sciences and technology (including biotech and pharmaceuticals), MBAs, certified financial analysts, accountants, statisticians, and lawyers. This has been the case with developing countries such as India too which have a sizeable population of such professionals. Tapping this talent pool allows foreign companies to avail of superior quality KPO services cost-effectively.

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