Bangalore: US-based outsourced medical transcription company HealthScribe Inc will make India a hub to get into other services taking advantage of high-quality offshore capability, and recruit 500 people in the country this year.

Making India a hub, the internet-based services provider would expand into high volume processing services such as billing, collection and coding pertaining to medicare groupings, in the next 12 to 18 months, its president and COO Dave Ehrhardt told a news conference in Bangalore.

MD of HealthScribe India, a 100 per cent subsidiary of the parent company, Suresh Nair said volume handled by the Indian entity per month is approaching 12 million lines, which is expected to exceed by 50 per cent this year.

Nair said 500 people would be recruited in 2004 to meet the demand. HealthScribe India currently employs over 1,200 medical language specialists with as many as 75 doctors in-house. It had a turnover of Rs 43.9 crore in 2002-03.

He said there was a lot of hype regarding medical transcription four years ago with projection that the industry is set to explode, which was not to be, adding, now there are only a handful players left in India.

According to him, the industry is set to boom in the current calendar year.