India-based NIIT Technologies, one of the world's largest IT corporations, has entered the U.S. healthcare industry with the acquisition of an electronic health records and referral management platform. The platform, called Preferr (Patient Referral System), enables collaboration between physicians, hospitals, diagnostic facilities and laboratories.
With ARRA mandating that physicians focus on providing better patient care through EHR sharing among hospitals and specialists, NIIT executives say that Preferr will help improve continuity and quality of care for the patient and improve operational efficiencies for all practices.
“The acquisition of Preferr is a major initiative to provide solutions in healthcare IT,” said Lalit Dhingra, president of NIIT Technologies. “The platform enables providers to meet federal guidelines for electronic health record meaningful use criteria and will enable NIIT to pursue this space and mark its presence within the healthcare arena."
Officials say NIIT Technologies’ Healthcare Division, set up in Orlando, will create high-value jobs to manage and deploy its IT products and services.
The Preferr platform was developed in Clermont, Fla., by a company called Visions@Work, whose founder, Pranam Ben, is now head of NIIT Technologies’ Healthcare Division. In the United States. Preferr is already in use by a number of healthcare providers in Central Florida to manage patient referrals and information exchange to doctors, hospitals, outpatient facilities and labs.
“The platform is an innovative SaaS-based IP that collaborates between various care entities by enhancing the portability, re-usability, integrity and history of health records,” said Ben. As a cloud-based service, he added, the technology "is a green-IT initiative that will help health care providers reduce their carbon footprint."
