US bill opens $20bn IT market

President Barack Obama will not be the only one celebrating the passage of the US healthcare reforms bill by the US House of Representatives - Indian IT companies are equally jubilant, suggests Business Standard.

That's because the Bill, which proposes to create electronic health records (EHRs) for all Americans by 2014, is expected to open up a $20 billion market opportunity for Indian IT services firms like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, Firstsource and MindTree.

Obama's plan proposes to allocate $150 billion to healthcare. Of this, nearly $20 billion is proposed for healthcare IT alone, most of which is expected to be spent on EHRs.

The Federal Communications Commission is advocating smartphone applications for physicians, along with increased broadband connectivity to hospitals and doctors that currently lack the service, as part of its new National Broadband Plan, reports eWeek.

The FCC cites the rising need for medical professionals to transmit large files, including medical imaging, as just one reason for its recommendations.

The National Broadband Plan advocates bringing affordable broadband access to a sizable portion of the 93 million Americans who lack a connection, in the hope that such an action will bring the US more in line with other countries that enjoy broader broadband adoption.

IT services provider HCL Technologies has entered into a strategic partnership with US-based software solution provider Wellogic to provide interoperability and health records management solutions to the global healthcare market, states RTTNews.

The partnership enables customer organisations to leverage Wellogic's solutions along with HCL's healthcare technology resources.

Wellogic will leverage HCL's comprehensive global sales, professional services, and cloud computing resources to help clients adopt and operate Wellogic's health information exchange, electronic health record and personal health record solutions.