US data tech company mulls forays into more fields for higher growth

InterSystems Corp, a US-based data technology company, will ramp up efforts to expand investments in China, accelerate the digital transformation of the healthcare industry and make forays into more fields like pharmaceutical, big data and fintech, said a senior executive of the company.

Luciano Brustia, regional managing director of the Asia Pacific at InterSystems, said the Chinese market is of great significance in the company's global business layout and has become one of the fast-growing markets across the globe, adding that he is bullish on the prospects of China's huge growth potential.

Brustia said the company's business in China grew by around 8 percent year-on-year in 2022 despite the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the growth momentum is expected to be maintained this year. Brustia said he is very glad to see that China's economy has been recovering with stronger impetus and he has full confidence in the country's future economic growth.

"We are interested in developing long-term relationships with Chinese partners and companies," Brustia said. Currently, InterSystems has inked partnerships with more than 500 hospitals nationwide and over 40 Chinese companies in the healthcare information technology sector to bolster the digitalization of medical information systems.

He noted that online healthcare and remote medical consultations have witnessed robust growth in China during the pandemic and an increasing number of people are now attaching more importance to their health, which has brought about emerging opportunities for InterSystems.

The company has made great efforts to introduce cutting-edge technologies and services in China, roll out tailor-made products for the Chinese market and speed up the digital transformation of the healthcare industry in the world's second-largest economy by leveraging its data management and analytics technology.

Brustia also spoke highly of the country's heightened moves to attract foreign capital, widen market access and promote the further opening-up of modern service industries in recent years, all of which have created a better business environment for foreign companies like InterSystems to expand business in China.

InterSystems has tripled its office space in Beijing and hired more people, marking a new round of expansion and voicing a strong commitment to the Chinese market.

China will boost its health-related industries with the market for health services estimated to reach 16 trillion yuan ($2.3 trillion) by 2030, said the National Health Commission.

The government has pledged to advance the development of online diagnosis and treatment as well as internet-based hospitals, which should help ease pressure on offline medical institutions and improve diagnosis efficiency.

Established in 1978, InterSystems provides data technology for extremely critical data in the healthcare, finance, and manufacturing and supply chain sectors. Its cloud-first data platforms solve scalability, interoperability and speed issues for large organizations around the globe.

Despite the progress made in healthcare IT over the past decade, hospitals and health systems continue to struggle with the collection, normalization, analysis and application of data to make timely clinical and business decisions, according to the company.

Jiang Xinwei, an analyst at Beijing-based market consultancy Analysys, said the pandemic has greatly expedited the digitalization of healthcare infrastructure, and the digital medical industry has become one of the most important application scenarios for next-generation information technology.

"Offline medical institutions should utilize cutting-edge technologies, such as telemedicine, 5G, the internet of things and virtual reality, to further improve the accuracy of medical diagnosis and the quality of patient services, as well as alleviate the situation of unbalanced and scarce medical resources across the nation."

The next five years will be a golden period for digitalization. The compound annual growth rate of China's digital transformation investment will reach 18.9 percent between 2022 and 2025, figures from market research firm International Data Corp showed. Chinese companies' investment in digital transformation is expected to grow four times faster than the country's economic growth this year, it said.