IHH Healthcare to Advance Technology-based Healthcare Expansion in India Through Fortis
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The healthcare giant seeks to bet on artificial intelligence (AI), precision medicine, advanced oncology technologies, and homegrown health-tech startups as part of its long-term growth strategy.
Malaysia-based Healthcare giant IHH Healthcare has announced plans to accelerate technology investments in India through its hospital chain Fortis Healthcare, IHH Group Chief Corporate Officer Ashok Pandit has said.
According to a Business Standard report, the healthcare giant seeks to bet on artificial intelligence (AI), precision medicine, advanced oncology technologies, and homegrown health-tech startups as part of its long-term growth strategy.
Pandit said, “We remain firmly committed to making significant investments in India, with Fortis continuing to be the primary platform through which we invest in the country.”
While he did not disclose any figures on IHH’s planned technology investments, Pandit indicated that innovation would play a multi-dimensional role in its overall India strategy going forward.
Currently, Fortis Healthcare operates a network of 6,100 beds across 36 facilities, including 1,200 beds under operations and management (O&M) agreements. IHH had previously stated that it aims to increase its network to 10,000 beds by 2030.
Highlighting the importance of technology investments in clinical care, Pandit said, “The first aspect is whether we are investing enough from a capital expenditure perspective to ensure that we have the best-in-class technology and equipment for patient treatment.”
He added that Fortis has already deployed technologies such as the MR-LINAC (linear accelerator) for cancer treatment and is evaluating proton beam therapy after IHH introduced the technology in Singapore.
Beyond technology investments, IHH is also prioritising precision medicine as another major investment area, through Fortis’ diagnostics arm Agilus, particularly in genomics and genetic testing aimed at improving personalised oncology treatment outcomes.
On the digital front, IHH’s Group chief business technology officer Quek Sin Kwok stated the firm has rolled out a unified data platform to support AI applications and analytics across its Indian and international hospital network.
“From an integration perspective, the priority is standardising core systems across our hospitals in India and other markets,” Kwok said.
According to Kwokm, while it integrates data across markets, the platform has been designed to comply with local data residency and privacy requirements. It will keep patient data under the control of individual country entities.
“At the same time, we have mechanisms to aggregate, anonymise and de-identify data so that it can be used responsibly at a broader level,” he added.
Alongside building the digital platform itself, IHH stated that it is also working on standardizing data semantics and data ontology for its network.
“By creating a common way of defining and structuring data across markets, any innovation or AI solution that is developed in one country can be replicated and scaled much more easily across the rest of our network,” Kwok said.
He further informed that the company recently partnered with Infosys to build an AI-enabled enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. The partnership is expected to help unify operations, optimise processes and enable a future-ready healthcare enterprise.
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