India a path-test outsourcing hub

It's a win-win situation at both ends. An increasing number of hospitals from the UK, UAE and neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh are outsourcing specialised pathological tests to India.

While these countries save both time and money even as they get access to internationally-accredited labs, it works out as a tremendous business opportunity for India.

"The outsourcing opportunity in the UK alone is 450 million pounds. That works out to about Rs 3,600 crore.

Outsourcing tests to India means a saving of about 30-40% for them which works out to a sum of almost 140 million pounds. That's a huge saving for them," said SRL Ranbaxy chief operating officer Janak Singh Bajwa.

SRL Ranbaxy is already flying in samples from a hospital chain in the UK and is about to enter into a tie-up with another one. In addition, it's also handling samples from hospitals in the UAE, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

It's not the routine haemoglobin or blood sugar tests which are being outsourced, but specialised tests which usually take more than three days to process.

Samples are picked up from these countries, put in special packages to maintain the required temperature, flown by air to labs in Delhi and Mumbai and then tested. Reports are sent across online and a hard copy follows a day later.

The entire start-to-finish process takes about 72 hours, out of which transportation alone can take up to 36 hours.Some African and southeast Asian countries may also soon start outsourcing to India.

"We will start processing samples from the UK by March. We are also exploring newer markets like South Africa, Kenya, Malaysia and Thailand," said Ameera Shah, vice-president, Metropolis Health Services.

"We have already got interested parties from the US for histopathological tests which are used in cancer diagnosis. We are also part of a consortium which has bid for a 600 million pound-worth teleradiology contract," said Shah.

There is a great dearth of radiologists in the UK and teleradiology will help doctors in India access and interpret images of CT or MRI scans transmitted from there.

While some like Bajwa are upbeat about the trend and feel the megabucks will start flowing in another 18 months or so, others are more circumspect.

"We have grown about five to six times since last year in this field. But once we reach a critical mass, the growth rate will be geometric," said Bajwa.

Dr Arvind Lal of Dr Lal's Path Labs which has also started conducting trial runs with hospitals in the US, UK, Middle East and neighbouring countries, said: "There's a lot of promise and people are showing interest.

But it will take some years before these trial runs will be converted into revenue."