Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Medical Transcription For the last two decades, world is converted into an information hub. Information technology plays an important part in making this happen. People in different countries are getting very close to each other through IT. Our society is converted into an information society. Information from any part of the world is transmitted to people in any other part of the globe within seconds. This is the biggest advantage of the advent of internet and information technology. Lot of new services, facilities, and value addition to existing services became available and the common citizen's life became more comfortable and hassle free.

The IT Enabled Services (ITES) like the personal banking has become very fast, reliable and easy. The customers now longer needs to visit the bank personally ad stand in long queues to do their banking. Other areas like travel, tourism, ticket bookings etc. have also became very easy. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) can be defined as the contracting out of non core business processes to an outside agency or company to help achieve increased value of shareholdings. BPO is mostly advantageous to both the outsourcer as well as the provider, because of cost reduction, productivity growth and innovative capabilities.


BPO is divided into two categories:

* Back office outsourcing (includes internal business functions such as billing or purchasing), and

* Front office outsourcing, which includes customer-related services such as marketing or tech support.

Information is like an ocean with no barriers. This type of information is needed by lakhs of people daily. So it is essential to gather information from the available sources and use it. ITES provide the tools for the user to float over the information ocean and reach their destinations, where the required drop of information is kept. So a large number of knowledge workers are needed all around the world for this service. Since this is a global activity, it is also known as 24 x 7 service. The workers should be skilled, efficient, their quality of service has to be high, but their cost should be less for others to request their service.


Major Activities in the BPO Sector Business process outsourcing encompasses call center outsourcing, human resources outsourcing (HRO), finance and accounting outsourcing, and claims processing outsourcing. There are many activities happening in the BPO Sector. Some of them are:

Medical Transcription - The BPO process had started with the Medical Transcription services. Medical transcription, also known as MT, is an allied health profession, which deals in the process of transcription. This is the process of converting the video-recorded reports as directed by the health care professionals into a text format.

In the health care sector, it is very essential to keep records of all the patients, their illness, and the treatments given, for future references by the doctors as well as the patients. This is also useful for the health insurance companies for managing their finances.

It was a cumbersome job in old days, where a stenographer was dictated the data by the physicians and it required huge time and labour costs in most of the countries like USA and Europe. BPO, using ITES, presented a perfect alternative to this problem. Using BPO, Medical transcription became cost effective , fast and of high quality. Doctor talks to his dictaphone at his convenience and the speech is recorded on a magnetic tape. The recorded speech is transmitted to a remote place, where there are less expensive and skilled human resource is available, using internet at high speed. The transcriptionist transcibe the data into a text format by listening to the recorded speech using a headphone.

The two main advantages of Medical transcription are:

Cost Effectiveness - The remote place where the data is transmitted is a country like India where man power is very much less expensive compared to countries like USA.

Easy Availability of transcribed data - This is possible because of the different time zones in India and America. When America is sleeping, it is day time in India, and the data received in the morning here in India will be transcribed to the text format by night, and will be sent back by the time the Americans start their next day activities.