Surgical Info to expand Hyderabad facility

Srinivasa Rao Dasari / Hyderabad

SURGICAL Information Systems (SIS), the Atlanta-based technology solutions provider for hospitals, is expanding its India development-cum-support centre located in Hitec City at Hyderabad. The centre is located in the Vanenberg IT Park, and has a headcount of about 100. The company is planning to add another facility adjacent to the existing facility in the Vanenberg IT Park.

“We expect to see an overall investment of about $4 million by the end of this financial year, this includes about $1.4 million in the current expansion drive, for which we have already started recruitment,” said Drew Cobb, vice president, SIS.

SIS Software’s 100 percent subsidiary, which is registered with the Software Technology Parks of India-Hyderabad (STPI-H), has already obtained ISO-9001:2000. It is now gearing up to achieve higher levels of certification such as SEI-CMM.

“Our research and development centre has enabled the US company to work proactively with clients to design and prototype new software products and to improve the quality of our software. Gradually, we expect the entire design and coding work to be done in Hyderabad,” Cobb said. The healthcare sector, which is considered recession-proof, is seeing steady and increased adoption of technology to bring down overall costs. Many healthcare facilities and hospitals across the US are using Indian software to improve their surgery departments in terms of patient care as well as financial performance.

“As the healthcare industry is constantly trying to bring down the overall cost of operations in surgical theatres, our software enables them to achieve this, handling a whole range of applications. Some major hospitals in the US have already taken to our software,” Cobb added.

Goa Agenda to be held in Feb 2004

The Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) is organising a high-profile infotech conference under the ‘Goa Agenda’ banner, with the theme “Emerging Markets in IT”. Scheduled for February 20-21, 2004, one of the underlying objectives of the event is to promote Goa as an ideal destination for software services firms and BPO outfits to set up operations.

The GCCI says that Goa has good potential to be at the forefront of the BPO sector, due to its inherent advantages of a high literacy rate combined with high proficiency in English, and a strong infrastructure in telecom, power and transportation. The tiny state of Goa has three engineering colleges, which annually turn out 700 engineers in the fields of electronics and telecom, computer engineering and information technology. An equal number of graduates are also produced by colleges and polytechnic institutes across the state. Goa also has the presence of major players in telecom, with the state-owned BSNL, Reliance Infocom, Tata Indicom and Satyam together providing a strong telecom infrastructure.

The Goa Agenda was previously held in December 2002 and attended by over 250 delegates from all over India who deliberated on the theme “IT for Society”. This year’s event has been planned as a follow-up to the previous edition, to foster further exchange of ideas among the invited IT luminaries and initiate a think-thank for the promotion of IT within the state. Around 300 delegates are expected to attend the conference, which will also have an accompanying IT exhibition.