An international conference on information technology in healthcare began in Cavelossim, Goa, with the industry captains and stakeholders deliberating on enhancing exchanges amongst the partners in the rapidly growing field.

"IT adoption in healthcare technology has grown at both process and enterprise level to accomplish a wide range of objectives, chief of which are improvement in process efficiency, enterprise effectiveness and customer satisfaction," Sandeep Sinha, Program Manager, Healthcare Practice, Frost & Sullivan, told PTI.

The US-based research agency is hosting the three-day event, the second in the series. The first conference was a multi-city event held in all the metros.

"The impact of IT in healthcare delivery has been significant to bring healthcare services closer to the people and also in improving disease management modalities," he said.

"The growth of IT in healthcare sector is likely to post compounded annual growth rate of 18 per cent by 2010."

The meet, partnered by various IT players like Microsoft, HP, Sobha Renaissance IT, AGFA Healthcare and InterSystem, will focus on connecting healthcare services and technologies that will help reduce costs and create an environment of easy accessibility to healthcare delivery.

"With the healthcare delivery space on an aggressive growth path, optimising the cost of expenditure has become the prime focus area for all the players concerned," Sinha said.

Dishing out figures, he said, "Today, tier I hospitals are spending approximately two per cent of their revenues on IT."

The meet has 100 delegates representing IT and healthcare companies, government bodies and hospitals.