Today, Providence serves patients in seven US states, including Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon and Washington, according to its website. The organisation has some 120,000 employees across hospitals, clinics and other health care services.
Providence India was established five years ago, and its India-based global innovation centre (GIC) was opened in 2020 in Hyderabad. Providence India has some 1,500 employees comprising technology, operations and health care domain experts, of whom 39 percent are women.
“Incubated within a health care system, our India teams have developed a deep understanding of US health care, solving real-world challenges in partnership with caregivers and clinicians,” Murali Krishna, chief global officer and country head, Providence India, tells Forbes India. “I was conscious about not making it another shared services operation, but truly establish the roots and foundations of a global innovation centre.”
Today Providence India is a strong engineering organisation that also encompasses IT, products, various run-the-business operations, including cybersecurity, and services. With Providence in a different time zone, the global organisation is also able to get 24×7 coverage for its core clinical and cloud network services.
One should see the work done by Providence and other such organisations against the backdrop of some massive challenges that affect access to care in the US. These include labour shortages and workforce burnout, rising inflation and health inequities in general. Therefore, experts like Krishna believe that digitalising the health care ecosystem is critical for Providence and others to provide the best possible care.
Over a career spanning almost 30 years, Krishna has previously worked at General Electric and Microsoft, where he spent close to 19 years, before joining Providence in 2019. He’s also been a startup founder and operator.
“The opportunity to take all my experience up until that point and learn about health care and bring technology-led innovation to the ecosystem was compelling,” he recalls. And on his watch, Providence’s GIC in Hyderabad has delivered multiple projects that have both elevated the IT end-user experience within the organisation, and helped the organisation deliver better patient care and experience.
For example, to tackle slow cloud adoption, the GIC implemented self-services and tech accelerators, which resulted in a 9x increase in cloud adoption. This modernised the IT infrastructure—with a cloud-first approach—and helped Providence take a holistic approach to its application portfolio. And it laid the foundation on which future technologies, including AI, can be added.
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Providence’s GIC also runs a cyber defence centre that works together with its US centre, ensuring round-the-clock monitoring of its IT systems and networks.
Using machine learning and AI applications, the Hyderabad team CT scan image solution is helping radiologists raise their productivity by nearly nine times, according to a note from Providence India. The GIC has rolled out eight products so far, four built in-house, and four more in collaboration with partners, Krishna says.
Today, the Hyderabad GIC is a digital transformation engine and an innovation hub for US health care, Providence India says in its note. Teams in the US and India collaborate and co-create digital solutions and products for the parent organisation. The GIC has evolved into a hub for IT, product development, enterprise services and follow-the-sun operations, including data and AI, cloud, cybersecurity, clinical engineering and digital experiences.
Providence India and its GIC are building partnerships with other US health systems to solve some common industry-wide problems. “Effectively, we are working on three challenges in health care: Workforce burnout, workforce shortage, and interoperability. How are we getting systems to talk to each other?” Krishna says.
He expects to more than double the headcount at Providence India, as it moves from an engineering organisation to one that provides a 360-degree view and capabilities. The centre is developing new proof-of-concepts and state-of-the art products in the areas of genomics, clinical research, whole-person care, and predictive scheduling, according to its note.
In the coming years, “we aspire to become a truly global hub, tapping the centres of excellence model, and we want to play a broader role in transforming the US health care ecosystem”, Krishna says.
(This story appears in the 21 February, 2025 issue
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