E-commerce will not enter with a bang

Although e-commerce is high on everybody`s agenda in South Africa, the concept is entering the transactional landscape organically rather than explosively. The physical telecommunications infrastructure is the main retarding factor. Despite this, e-commerce structures are being put in place where systems lend themselves to Internet communication. In the health-care industry for example, many companies are just a few steps away from true e-commerce.

Within the definition of e-commerce as a series of transactional processes beginning with ordering and culminating with payment over the Internet as opposed to VPNs and WANs, health-care is moving forward cautiously. Some medical insurance companies already offer members an Internet interface to key their passwords and membership numbers in to check the status of their accounts. However, you cannot discuss an Internet interface without looking at the software systems sitting behind it. With the Year 2000 bug forcing many companies to put new systems in place, some are using the opportunity to kill two birds by setting up Web-enabled systems.

One of e-commerce`s main objectives is speedier transactions. Narrow bandwidth is an issue here. A home shopper buying vitamins from an online health shop may be prepared to browse for a few minutes while the transaction goes through, but a buyer for a large retail pharmacy group may not have the same patience trying to put through a bulk order to a wholesaler.

The health-care industry readily lends itself to e-commerce. Many of the key service providers, such as doctors, dentists and pharmacies, already have the IT infrastructure and processes in place to begin interacting via the Internet with medical aids and pharmacies and even hospitals and clinics. And there are players such as medical insurance companies and specialist IT companies which have seen this opportunity and are bringing the various parties into organised online transactional relationships. The problem all the visionaries here are facing is the fragmented status of the health-care industry. A doctor with 3 000 patients might find himself having to interact with 168 different medical aids, pharmacies, pathologists, clinics and hospitals, each with its own Internet interface - clearly an opportunity for a centralised body to act as a clearing house for all the transactions.

In some cases, dedicated clearing houses within specific health-care corporates exist already, but the service needs to be offered by an independent party in the same way the ACB offers a cheque clearing house to the banks. E-commerce will reduce much of the burden now falling on call centres and may in some instances replace call centres in the long term as service providers empower clients to search Internet sites and databases for information.

Health-care`s move to e-commerce is also being hampered by a lack of standard codes for drugs in South Africa. We still use the NAPPI rather than the international EAN coding system and only 70%-80% of all drugs have a NAPPI code. EDI will eventually be completely phased out. It certainly is old technology and bulky for effective use on the Internet. Obviously, solutions will also have to be put in place to allow the man in the street to benefit from e-commerce enabled health-care systems. But that`s a different debate.