PRACTO Pte. Ltd. said its business in the Philippines is growing as the International Data Corp. (IDC) forecast spending in health-care information technology (IT) in the Philippines to reach P2.788 billion ($60 million) in 2019.
Practo’s user base in the Philippines has grown over four times and appointments booked on the platform have grown by about 25 times since October last year, the software-as-a-service firm said in a March 21 statement. Practo said seven months after announcing their entry in the Philippines on August 2015, the company has over 11,000, or over 70 percent, of all doctors across 17 cities in the Greater Manila area—making it the largest and most extensive doctor database in the country. Practo will soon completely cover Cebu, Cavite and Batangas region, as well as expand product lines to cover more health-care segments across wellness, fitness and preventive and curative medicine, the company said.
The company recently launched operations in São Paulo, Brazil.
Practo’s announcement came after the IDC said on February 19 that health-care IT spending in the Philippines will have a compound annual growth rate of 4 percent during 2016 to 2019. Citing its recent report, IDC said research findings showed that the largest spending group in health IT is the health-care providers market, including hospitals with 88-percent share in 2015. IDC added that in the same year, spending on the hardware segment is the highest at 79-percent share, with services and software spending ranked the second and third places, clearly indicating the country’s current priority is focused on upgrading existing IT infrastructure. “This is consistent with many other countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations region.”
IDC Health Insights Market Analyst Arpana Bharti explained that the primary macroeconomic indicators driving growth in the country include upheaval of infrastructure in health care and education services and a growing number of private hospitals in the Philippines. “These indicators will bolster the IT spending growth in the Philippines health-care market,” Bharti was quoted in the statement as saying.