"There are huge opportunities in the healthcare sector waiting to be explored and tapped by ICT (information and communication technologies) to drive the next wave of growth in the high-tech industry," outgoing Intel CEO Craig Barrett said here.

He was addressing the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) CEO Forum.

"In fact, healthcare is one of the last industries which has not made good use of the technology so far to bring about a radical change in the way it should serve the people," Barrett told about 100 corporate heads.

Highlighting a few opportunities in the sector, Barrett said the medical care industry could make use of IT for accessing information available anywhere, anytime in digital form.

"The second area of transformation can be in the understanding of human genome, DNA and human peculiarities of diseases."

Computing power can also be used to analyse real time effectively and treat diseases as individual cases with the required dosages, he said.

The third area of interest is features outside the medical industry such as cancer proteins, viruses, blood cells.

"If we can make use of the same technology features we use in making transistors for real time early analysis of fresh elements of cancerous proteins or indicators of other diseases, then their symptoms can be detected much earlier to prevent their growth.

"If most diseases are transmitted for early diagnosis and early treatment, we can be more precise in early diagnostics using some of the features of our technologies. Application of IT in medical sciences can bring about a radical transformation in the way diseases are diagnosed and treated," Barrett said.

The next biggest advancement of integrated circuit technology from computers to cell phones will be medical sciences, he said.

"Healthcare will be the next area of great opportunity for the IT industry," Barrett added.

--Indo-Asian News Service