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Nittany to use MT as entry strategy only

Bharat Kumar

N.S. Vageesh

CHENNAI, Nov. 26

MEDICAL transcription (MT) is not a money spinner. If anything now, it is only an entry point to other IT-enabled services in the area of healthcare.

This may be surprising coming from one of the early players in the area of medical transcription. But the reasons are obvious: Medical transcription has been a statutory requirement for medical practitioners in the US. They out-sourced it to countries su ch as India because of the cost advantages. A vendor differentiated himself only in terms of pricing and not in value terms. With MT not being time-sensitive, value addition became a near impossibility. With increasing numbers of vendors, the business be came unviable.

This has forced Nittany Decision Services (P) Ltd to move onto medical billing services for doctors and insurance adjudication services. It has also developed a software product targeted at IT-enabled service providers and service users.

In April 2000, the majority stake in Nittany changed hands to Idea Ventures, which is an incubator of IT start-ups. Nittany has transformed itself from a back-office set up for a group of doctors in the US to a self-sustaining practice now. Nittany is no w looking to change its name to live down the image of merely being a medical transcription company. Also, it plans to rope in a Big Five consultant to help ``put in place a formal professional practice and management style.''

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Mohan Krishna, Chief Operating Officer at Nittany said, ``Proactiv, the code name for our product, is intended to give some value addition to our customers and to help us differentiate our services. This is meant to capture all our past learning in the area of healthcare and insurance.''

So, will Nittany desist from rendering MT services? Mr Krishna said, ``There is very little margin in the MT business, but we will continue to use MT as an entry strategy to move into medical billing and insurance adjudication services for customers.''

According to Mr Krishna, ``In medical billing and insurance adjudication, we need to have an idea of the industry before we can commit to projects. The quality of the vendor clearly makes a difference here.''

The company is also looking to enter the businesses of financial services (accounting and taxation), e-mail management and call centre management. According to Mr Krishna, ``Our current manpower strength is about 340. We are looking to increase that to 2 ,000 in about 18 months' time.''

The company has already put in place land and service infrastructure to support the growth plans, he said. For the 18-month period ending September 1999, the company recorded a turnover of around Rs 20 crore.