HealthScribe needs no introduction. Incorporated in 1992 as an offshoot of Kriya Systems and headquartered in Sterling, Virginia. HealthScribe pioneered the Medical Transcription industry in India when it commenced its operations in Bangalore in early 1994 through HealthScribe India, a 100% subsidiary. The following is based on excerpts from a tete-a-tete with Mr. RamDas Singh Khalsa, Project Manager, HealthScribe India Pvt. Ltd. at Bangalore.

HealthScribe has been one of the pioneers in successfully demonstrating the MT rightsourcing model in India. We asked Mr. Khalsa about what he thought were HealthScribe's strengths and what he perceived to be the bottleneck. ''Our model is founded on having our own infrastructure in the United States. In the long run, it will be very difficult for any medical transcription company in India to succeed without also having a strong infrastructure in the United States. HealthScribe has its own sales team and customer service representatives and also a large number of medical transcriptionists in the United States.'' Mr Khalsa stressed, and went on to add '' Before anyone enters into business, any business, he or she should have a clear plan on how the business will be attracting its customers. An MT business with highly trained MTs and very sophisticated equipment and software will still fail without work.

There has been a lot of hype being attached to MT being an IT enabled service in India. This has somehow spread the misconception that MT is basically a data entry job. We discussed in length the core skills required. ''Medical transcription does require certain skills and significant amounts of training. Only persons whose English skills are at least equivalent to those of a United States high school graduate (12th year, 9th month on the TOEFL scale) should enter medical transcription training. There are many other qualities that a potential trainee should possess, but minimum skills in English are most important,'' Mr Khalsa highlighted. He went on to add that in addition to all the medical terminology and MT skills needed to be assimilated during training, all trainees need ample familiarization with American usage and euphemisms. Doctors in the United States may be understanding of occasional errors in difficult medical terminology, but never accept errors in English or American usage, he explained.

Investment required in developing intangible assets in the form of human resources does effect the scalability of this business model in India. Many big Indian business houses when stepping into this industry quote that they would be training and employing above 1,500 MTs on location within six months. We attempted to imbibe from ground realities and HealthScribe's experience. ''Our experience over the last five years has taught us at HealthScribe that the ideal size of an incoming class of trainees is about 50 persons. By outsourcing the classroom portion of our training program to NEXT, we are presently able to start a new class of 50 persons each month. It has taken us quite some time to be able to get to the point where we have enough qualified trainers to grow at this pace.'' informed Mr Khalsa.

Training is the basic criteria, which sets apart an MT whether in India or the US. However many unscrupulous parties are offering mediocre training at high costs. How does one grade a training establishment, we queried of Mr Khalsa. '' In the past month, I have come across two Bangalore training facilities which charged around Rs.15,000 per person for training with a guaranteed job at Rs.5,000 per month following training. In both cases, the fees were collected, training of questionable quality was given, but there was no job. Now the trainees are out a lot of money, don't know if they are really properly trained and have no job. This is tragic for the MTs. If I knew how to get the message out, I would, '' he responded. His message to all new aspirants looking towards MT as a career is:'' Be extremely thorough in checking out a potential training school before handing over any money. I would want to know as much as possible about the financial stability of the organization as well as the qualifications of the trainers. Don't accept training schools merely on their word, do all the checking you can.''

To be continued...


By our special editor, Bangalore.12 Feb, 2000