NIIT acquires cloud-based EHR platform

Thursday, December 30, 2010

IT solutions provider NIIT Technologies recently announced it has acquired an electronic health records platform developed by Florida-based Visions@Work.

NIIT says the cloud-based platform called Preferr, which stands for Patient Referral System, will allow it to break into the healthcare market in the United States, where EHR adoption has become a major focal point in recent years.

Preferr enables collaboration between healthcare providers, including physicians, hospitals, laboratories and diagnostic facilities. Additionally, NIIT claims the SaaS platform improves the quality and continuity of patient care and boosts operational efficiency.

"The acquisition of Preferr is a major initiative to provide solutions in healthcare IT," said Lalit Dhingra, president of NIIT. "The platform enables providers to meet federal guidelines for electronics health record meaningful-use criteria and will enable NIIT to pursue this space and mark its presence within the healthcare arena."

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the U.S. government has mandated that healthcare providers digitize their medical records. According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about half of doctors in the United States say they have digitized some of their medical records.