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It is crucial to understand that printing solutions have moved beyond their bulky, expensive, and noisy proposition to being a multi-functional device that is sleek looking and energy-efficient

"While we are still on the journey to make hospitals paperless entities, printing and imaging partners are providing enormous benefits by enabling a better patient experience" - Samir Shah

Over 100 per cent growth in the next five years. That is what a recent report by Technopak Advisors predicted for the Indian healthcare industry, which is currently pegged at $35 billion. And, with medical tourism booming in our country, it has become more important than ever to showcase the quality of work that the Indian healthcare sector is doing. Impressive looking reports and marketing collaterals shared with international customers are an integral part of this quality healthcare service as well and this is where printing and imaging can play a crucial role in the long-term profitability of the healthcare industry.

Innovative Health Solutions

Within the country, high incidences of lifestyle-related diseases and rise in income levels have created an immense potential for healthcare players here. Simultaneously, an increase in the literacy rate, and greater awareness about the various health benefits that employees are entitled to, has led to consumers replacing regular health check-ups with long-term health plans. This includes insurance, investments and family health plans. In this sense, health solutions have found a sizeable audience, and the horizon is only going to expand as education, internet, attractive health schemes and other influencing factors penetrate the middle class and smaller cities across the country.

IT is the Change

However, this opportunity that is knocking on the door of the healthcare sector will remain under-utilised without the adoption of an ideal IT infrastructure within the industry. Increased awareness and premium prices of healthcare plans mean that customers are demanding better service quality from clinics and hospitals. In this context, it becomes essential for the healthcare sector to adopt practices that support benchmark diagnostic services, and speedier, more professional direct customer services.

A Powerful Tool

With a strong IT infrastructure, hospitals are being empowered to integrate their internal workflow and also streamline their processes in the bargain. Infrastructure in this case would include advanced computer aided medical equipment for accurate diagnosis, as well as the standard internal enterprise tools and software that a hospital or clinic deploys for its own use. And now, with the increasing number of private hospitals and clinics competing for customers, there is a growing requirement for these hospitals and clinics to update and invest in imaging and printing products for their marketing collateral.

Printing and Imaging: Critical Role

Often overlooked in the scheme of IT investments, printing and imaging actually form a critical component of the internal IT infrastructure. Like most businesses, healthcare institutes must reduce costs, educate and attract customers, and also increase productivity by bringing together their systems —-patient records, diagnosis, confidential data, etc. It must streamline processes, which includes managing documentation in an organised way— so as to ensure the best utilisation of resources, save time, and avoid any confusion that a document-intensive industry is susceptible to.

Printing needs within the healthcare industry differ depending upon the size of the organisation. While a smaller clinic may want to focus on reducing the cost of their everyday printouts and improve the quality of their marketing collaterals, a bigger hospital usually gives priority to processes that simplify paperwork, and help them better manage technology assets.

Until recently, smaller hospitals, did not spend too much time on analysing their imaging and printing environment. Activities like printing, faxing, copying and scanning were outsourced to local vendors to achieve professional-looking documents, and keep the office space least occupied by tech-devices. However, as doctors venture out and set up their own clinics, their focus is to provide the best of services to their customers and keep costs low. In fact, some of the smaller hospitals are more open to adopting newer technologies available in the market. For them, it is crucial to understand that printing solutions have moved beyond their bulky, expensive, and noisy proposition to being a multi-functional device that is sleek looking, energy-efficient, and equipped with tools that allow organisations to control the way printing is done. This, in itself, has made in-house printing a valuable proposition.

If 'printing-marketing collaterals' is your priority, then in-house colour printers are the perfect bet for you, as they give the flexibility to print marketing collaterals without any hassle of finding a suitable and efficient vendor. Simultaneously, it prevents large volumes of marketing collaterals from getting wasted. For short-run marketing collaterals, where you wish to print a limited number of copies, in-house printing proves to be more cost-effective.

A 360 Degree Turn

While colour brings numerous benefits to business professionals, it can also bring challenges of wastage and higher costs. With features that enables organisations to define, lock out and monitor colour usage in workgroups, through colour access controls through which costs can be cut and printing abuse can be prevented. With other tools like Duplex Printing (printing on both sides of the paper), and centralised control of who can print what, some of the new printing solutions can give healthcare businesses a 360 degree turnaround!

For bigger hospitals, competition in the marketplace is a major cause for organisations to adopt technology, with private sector hospitals taking the lead. There has been a major perception shift from the stage where IT was seen as a support function, to it being seen as a tool that helps them reduce cost, increase ROI, and also track the carbon footprint of the organisation.

By ensuring that their printing and imaging needs are taken care of by credible and professional vendors, hospitals can ensure that their staff focuses on their core business - providing quality healthcare. Professional vendors usually provide an end-to-end printing and imaging management solutions that begin with the assessment of the facility's document needs, capabilities, and processes. Subsequently, the service provider implements relevant solutions that help streamline document workflow, and digitise documents, thereby achieving operational excellence for the hospital. Another reason for deploying Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and 'Patient Identification' printing solutions is the enhanced security that these solutions provide.

Printing Worldwide

In many countries, where compliance is a major concern, printing technology also empowers the larger hospitals to easily comply with Government mandates, including patient-privacy regulations. India is yet to raise the bar on regulatory issues that govern the healthcare sector, so it could be some time before the industry sees the benefits in this regard.

Just like the smaller clinics, multifunctional printers are also an important component of the printing and imaging infrastructure at the big hospitals. However, the complexity differs depending upon the amount of printing, copying, faxing and scanning capacity required by the hospital.

The Bonuses

While we are still on the journey to make hospitals paperless entities, printing and imaging partners are providing enormous benefits by enabling a better patient experience and efficiently managing medical and administrative documents and information, from patient records and images to procurement orders and equipment— while driving down costs. In such a scenario, the printing partners must be credible enough to offer integrated solutions that manage the creation, access and security of patient and general office information.

samir-s_shah@hp.com

The writer is Director - LaserJet and Enterprise Solutions Imaging & Printing Group HP India