New innovation centre of athenahealth in Chennai

Chennai, Feb 24 (UNI) Fortune 500 US-based athenahealth, provider of online revenue cycle management services for medical practices, will supplement existing outsourced operations with its new innovation centre here.

Giving an overview of growing physician business services to the media here, athenahealth President and CEO Jonathan Bush said the centre, which would be opened later today, would employ additional high-level software developers and process engineers this year.

The company would add about 500 people, inclusive of the core team of 50, during this year.

The health market in the US was extremely complicated and his company was keen to build a network like Visa in this space, especially as insurance agencies were not online. 'We intend replicating the online experience as there is a churn out of 5.5 tonne of paper every day.' The national health expenditure in the US was projected to reach 3.6 trillion USD in 2014 and athena, which currently had a one per cent market share, was keen to apply technology in the healthcare business effectively. Of the six lakh physician population in the US, athena was catering to over 6,900 physicians. The company collected 1.6 billion USD on behalf of its clients annually.

Mr Bush said athenahealth had been operating in Chennai through contract relationship with Perot Systems for over four years, with its dedicated team of over 300 people.

The new innovation centre would combine two of India's core strengths, the business process outsourcing and software development.

One-third of the company's value-addition would come from the Chennai operations, he said, adding that the software use of the product from athena would contribute to an annual revenue increase of 16 per cent and a saving of 35 per cent in the payment cycle time.

'We are selling not the basis of labour arbitrage but on the basis of better results.' Investment into the Chennai centre was over half-a-million USD.

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