THE battle for bright IT minds for the health-care sector is about to begin, with top-of-the-market salaries to be paid to attract and retain such talent.

Traditionally, health care is not the sector of choice for IT professionals because of perceived poor salaries.

But with rapid technological advances in medicine, more IT specialists are needed to fill in the gaps, and hospitals are more willing to match salary expectations.

"Health care has been at the low end of the salary bracket," said Roger Olofsson, associate director (IT division) at human resources (HR) consultancy firm Robert Walters Singapore.

For instance, a software engineer with up to five years of Java and C++ programming experience would likely make $60,000 a year while his counterparts in other industries in Singapore get up to $90,000.

Pay differences are more stark higher up the hierarchy, the HR firm's 2006 salary survey shows.

The typical salary range for an IT director here is from $200,000 to $350,000, and for a project director from $180,000 to $300,000. Salaries in the health-care sector tend to gravitate towards the lower end of these scales.

Yearly pay increases for tech jobs in the sector hover at 5 per cent, even during good times, compared with up to 20 per cent pay rises in investment banking.

Robert Walters has yet to release its 2007 study. But the numbers look set to change.

Already, the two local clusters of public hospitals - the National Healthcare Group (NHG) and SingHealth - are sweetening their offers to fill a total of 60 vacancies in IT.

NHG is prepared to pay at the 65th to the 90th percentile of market salaries. This is not just to attract people, but also to retain top performers and those with rare skills, including data architects and business analysts.

"Altruism is no longer a selling point in health care since we are a private organisation," said Joe Sim, chief corporate development officer and acting chief information officer (CIO) at NHG.

Salary revisions have been under way at the group since 2006, using benchmark studies from human resources consultant Mercer.

"If I lose a guy, I would have to pay a lot more to replace him, not to mention the hassle of retraining," said Joe. The learning curve is steep as IT specifications have to follow medical procedures, which are highly specialised. "We started with huge salary gaps at first, but they have been narrowed."

NHG, which includes National University Hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital and Alexandra Hospital, plans to grow its 160-strong technology workforce to 200 people by year-end.

The team will support ongoing projects like digitising the clinical records of warded patients.

New projects are also on the cards. They include an integrated pharmacy automation and in-patient medication administration system.

NHG is evaluating bids for this system, which will see a conveyor belt-like machine sorting and packing drugs at the right dose for every warded patient. Drug and patient information is entered by a doctor into a computer linked to the sorting machine.

Currently, pharmacists and nurses manually prepare the drugs and put them in plastic cups. Human error in preparation, dispensing and administration cannot be avoided.

"The percentage of serious errors like wrong dose and wrong drug is very low, but it has the potential of causing serious damage to patients," said Joe.

By automating the task, NHG hopes to eliminate these errors, saving $1.5 milion to $2 million a year from drug wastage and potential revenue losses from new patients as existing ones extend their stay.

The other organisation, SingHealth, said its pay packages have recently been revised and will be "competitive".

But Alvin Ong, assistant director of innovation and strategic IT planning at SingHealth, declined to reveal specifics.

The group, which represents Singapore General Hospital, Changi Hospital and the National Heart Centre, will be adding 20 staff members to its team of 200.

Wanted positions are mostly technical including data architects, functional analysts and system specialists. They must have at least three years of experience in relational databases and .NET development, and security and network certification.

But the biggest IT needs are "soft" skills like project and vendor management and budgeting. "These positions are not (being) filled as quickly as we wish," said Alvin.

Including private hospitals, the entire sector is looking at creating 110 IT positions this year, said research firm Frost & Sullivan. That is 10 jobs more than in 2007, according to its survey of 100 IT directors and HR managers late last year.

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