Murli Reddy, Business Unit Head – Healthcare and Life Sciences
Murli Reddy heads Syntel’s Health Care and Life Sciences vertical. In this role, he is responsible for the Business Unit strategy and execution, P/L management, customer relationship management, leadership development and employee satisfaction within Syntel’s HCLS BU. He is also responsible for IT and KPO service delivery.
Murli joined Syntel in 2003 as the Delivery Director for its Automotive Business. Prior to joining Syntel, Murli held various positions with TCS working on projects in the Government, Airlines, Insurance and Retail industries and leading several assignments across the world including Uganda, Mauritius, U.S., Europe, UK, and India. He also led the SEI CMM level 5 journey for the Hyderabad center for TCS.
Murli’s expertise lies in developing reusable solutions, products and frameworks that answer the challenges of the market. He has conceptualized many practices and product divisions including the ones focused on governance, value added tax, and workflow solutions to improve internal operational efficiency.
He aspires to create an environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, team spirit, innovation and technical excellence. His success in building strong teams is propelled by ensuring the best talent is recruited, collaborating with his philosophy to “always recruit people who are better than you in your team.”
Murli holds a B.Tech degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the JNTU College of Engineering, Hyderabad, India. He is an active member of Syntel’s CSR – S’Prayas, which provides an educational platform for underprivileged children in India.
Interview with Mr. Murli Reddy
1. What are the top trends you see in the Health IT industry? What should CIOs keep in mind as they plan budgets for 2013?
In June this year, the policy uncertainty was removed after the Supreme Court’s judgment. The political uncertainty has also been eliminated with the re-election of Barack Obama. With these changes in the last two quarters, the focus is going to be on implementing regulations, engaging with other stakeholders, consumer engagement approach and reduction of the overall cost of healthcare while improving the quality of care.
I am sure CIOs are actively engaging with their business partners to align their initiatives and budgets around the above. We expect that the CIOs are going to focus on reduction of the operating expenses to create bandwidth and to implement CAPEX programs across the companies. They will be preparing their organizations to leverage the regulatory situation to transform their businesses, pilot out programs on Big Data, Analytics, and Cloud, and build initiatives around clinical integration, wellness and new service models for their consumers.
2. Health IT outsourcing seems to have increased due to demand for talent, what are the trends you see in Health IT outsourcing?
Healthcare traditionally spent a very small portion of their revenues, approximately 2% – 2.5%, on Information Technology. This spend is likely to increase and with the various initiatives around clinical and non-clinical aspects, the amount of work to be done within the increased spend is also increasing dramatically. This causes stress on timelines, cost structures and available bandwidth in mature markets.
This trend would lead to outsourcing. However, we also need to note that the outsourcing is much more matured, compared to the early 2000s. In order to leverage this trend, companies have to be prepared and provide value add (instead of a labor arbitrage) combining domain skills (clinical skills), technology skills and appreciation of the healthcare systems across different geographies.
3. What do you think differentiates Indian offshore companies from US based large IT service providers? How will offshore companies continue to compete in a demanding marketplace?
At this point of time, most Indian offshore companies have limited differentiation in Healthcare beyond the standard IT outsourcing value adds. On the other hand, Syntel has invested in building domain over several years and has built differentiators combining technology and domain to provide value-added solutions for its customers.
4. US Healthcare is obviously going through a lot of change due to health reform, what are the trends you see in the global healthcare IT space?
Yes – the changes in the U.S. Healthcare is expected to accelerate due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). One must also appreciate that there are several complex changes with the onset of ACOs, Health Information Exchanges, and reimbursement model changes. These changes would lead to a higher CAPEX investment in clinical, integration, consumer-facing technologies, Business Intelligence and Analytics solution.
5. Security is a big concern in healthcare, what should CIOs think of before they sign outsourcing deals that will keep the data secure and business safe?
Patient Health Information (PHI) is very sensitive. The CIOs should review the commitment of organizations to build and enhance controls on SSAE, BS7799, and PHI to ensure that adequate investment is made in protecting sensitive data. While the CIOs can protect them contractually, they should also evaluate their partner’s focus and track record in other comparable industry segments and their willingness to get audited and assessed regularly, both internally and externally.
6. Compared to other industries Healthcare seems to have lagged in innovation and adoption of technology, what do you see as the top technology areas healthcare payers, providers and life sciences companies are going to invest in in 2013 and beyond?
Traditionally, Healthcare companies have lagged beyond on innovation especially due to the percentage spend on IT on revenues, compared to the financial services. While there are several technology areas that require enhanced focus, I believe that there is going to be a huge focus on analytics and medical intelligence, Business Intelligence and clinical data warehouses, efficiency and business excellence technologies like BPM, enterprise architectures, rules engines and integration across various business areas and medical equipment. These technologies existed for several years, but it is important to understand the packaging of these to provide solutions to the business problems encountered by these companies.
7. Labor arbitrage by using offshore resources was the key driver and continues to be a driver, but increasingly large companies are setting up offshore captive centers. What do you see as the impact of this on your business?
All indicators state that the offshore captive centers would now be more in the ‘hybrid model’ rather than the earlier pure play captive centers. The captives are never a good model for cost reduction/labor arbitrage. It is important to note that the successful captives are focusing on collaborating with partners like Syntel and building synergies that maximize the advantages of captive and offshore partners.
8. ICD-10 is regarded the next Y2K, What do you see as the impact of ICD-10 on Health IT spend in 2013 ?
ICD-10 is not as simple as Y2K. It is more complex due to the business implication and the impact it has on the business operations, core IT applications and the downstream enterprise level business intelligence, fraud management and analytics applications. This change should be considered as a transformation initiative rather than a mere compliance initiative. The spending is likely to increase in 2013 across the entire life cycle of assessment, remediation, testing and new application development.
9. In the life sciences space, clinical research and outsourcing around it seems to be a hot topic, what is your view of clinical process outsourcing?
Clinical research and outsourcing has always been a major segment for several years and it is likely to increase due to the population demographics in India. This could lead to more clinical trials, and the availability of talent (doctors, nurses, pharma specialists) in India to handle global clinical processes from an outsourced location and the need to increase the throughput of R&D due to dwindling new drugs.
This is very specialized and it is important to note that the model is more knowledge-oriented and high-end domain than a pure play transaction processing segment.
10. Any closing comments?
The healthcare industry is at a very interesting point, where innovation has to be a key strategic initiative to focus on patient care and reduction of the healthcare costs. The industry is going to see several shifts in technology, adoption cycles and also the engagement models with partners. The discussions with partners and vendors are likely to be more strategic, focused on an innovation theme, based on the foundation of solid domain and technology.