Healthcare IT is Raising the Bar in 2026 and India-Linked Platforms are in the Mix

Healthcare IT has become one of the most consistently attractive segments in global healthcare private equity. Bain’s Global Healthcare Private Equity Report 2026 notes that healthcare IT has outperformed the broader healthcare sector on returns since 2017 and has been taking a larger share of healthcare PE transactions over time.

The segment is not getting easier. The performance bar is rising and the sources of value creation are shifting. Tailwinds such as billing complexity, workflow digitisation, interoperability requirements, and the move toward value-based care continue to support demand. But the days when investors could rely primarily on “adoption” to drive outcomes are fading. Bain argues that valuation multiples remain high and sponsors are underwriting explicit value levers in the base case, rather than hoping for multiple expansion.

That shift is worth spelling out because it’s the difference between a theme and a playbook. In the earlier era, “healthcare will digitise” was itself an edge, because penetration was low and the direction was obvious. In the current era, digitisation is table stakes. The question is which platforms can compound outcomes through execution: monetisation discipline, sales productivity, product velocity, and increasingly, automation-driven margin expansion. The market is still paying for growth, but it’s paying more for growth that doesn’t require irrational burn or perpetual discounting.

The new standard is through software performance benchmarks. While the Rule of 40 has historically been used as a high-level bar for software businesses, the top-performing healthcare IT companies now exceed 60% on the same measure, raising the question of whether a “Rule of 60” becomes the new standard. It is a shorthand for what the market is rewarding: growth and margin discipline at the same time.

Bain also lays out what that discipline looks like in practice. It points to pricing and packaging programs that drive upsell through bundling and secure like-for-like price increases, and to more systematic cross-sell and upsell go-to-market motion so sales teams can manage pipelines more effectively. M&A is another lever to accelerate growth through product breadth and to create cost synergies. The message is clear: winning outcomes are increasingly engineered, not assumed.

This is also where healthcare IT differs from a lot of “horizontal SaaS” lore. In many healthcare workflows, the buyer is not shopping for delight. They’re shopping for reduction in denial rates, faster collections, fewer FTE hours spent on administrative grind, and lower compliance risk. That makes ROI legible, but it also makes procurement sharper. If a platform can’t quantify impact or defend pricing, the customer doesn’t need to churn to punish you. They can simply stall expansion, refuse new modules, or grind you down in renewals.

Generative AI is now central to that engineering. GenAI is capable of streamlining back-end processes to deliver cost savings and enabling new product development that expands revenue. It also warns that incumbents may need to strengthen their position using genAI or risk being displaced by AI-native disruptors. In other words, genAI is both a tool for improving unit economics and a competitive pressure on business models.

The easy mistake here is to treat genAI as a feature add-on. If genAI can meaningfully compress labor, reduce cycle times, and raise accuracy in workflows that were historically human-heavy, then it changes cost structures and competitive moats. That creates two simultaneous pressures: customers start expecting efficiency gains to show up in pricing, and competitors start using automation to undercut or out-execute incumbents. In that environment, “we added AI” is not the point. The point is whether AI changes throughput and economics in a way that customers feel and rivals can’t replicate quickly.

For India, the relevance is visible as evident by notable activity in Asia. Several 2025 transactions involved revenue cycle management platforms with a strong presence in India. These are India-linked platforms sitting inside a part of healthcare IT where outcomes are operational, measurable, and scalable. That makes them unusually compatible with the rising bar Bain is describing. If you can improve collections, reduce denials, compress A/R days, or automate eligibility and coding workflows, the value is visible in cash and in labor productivity.

The broader takeaway is that healthcare IT remains a durable segment, but returns will increasingly accrue to platforms that can execute on a tighter set of levers. Pricing architecture has to be deliberate, not improvised. Go-to-market needs to be built around expansion, not just retention. M&A and integration capability matter because the path to scale is rarely organic alone. And genAI has to show productivity and product advantage.

One more implication is worth adding for 2026: talent and operating cadence become differentiators. In a world where everyone claims they have an AI roadmap and a cross-sell strategy, the separator is whether management teams can actually run the machine weekly: pipeline hygiene, quota design, renewal discipline, implementation velocity, and measurable product delivery. In healthcare, that operating cadence has to coexist with compliance, customer scrutiny, and complex buying committees. That’s why top outcomes are concentrating.

And that brings us back to India-linked platforms. India’s role here is not just labor arbitrage. It’s also operational scale, process depth, and the ability to combine human-in-the-loop workflows with automation in a way that healthcare systems will trust. If AI is reshaping the unit economics of administration, then platforms that can blend automation with domain-trained operations can be well positioned, especially in workflows where accuracy and compliance still require human supervision.

Bain’s conclusion is not that every healthcare IT asset will win. It is that the segment’s long-run appeal is intact, while the standard for what qualifies as “top-performing” is rising. In that context, it is notable that the report points to RCM platforms with a strong India presence as part of meaningful deal activity in Asia in 2025.

Chief Brand & Investor Relations Officer

Sneha Dadrwal

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why has healthcare IT become so attractive in healthcare private equity?

A: Because Bain notes it has outperformed the broader healthcare sector on returns since 2017 and has been taking a larger share of healthcare PE transactions over time.

Q: What does it mean that the performance bar is rising?

A: Bain’s point is that high multiples persist, so sponsors can’t rely on adoption tailwinds or multiple expansion. They have to underwrite explicit value-creation levers in the base case.

Q: What is the Rule of 60 idea, and why does it matter?

A: Bain notes top-performing healthcare IT companies now exceed 60% on a Rule of 40-style metric, implying the market increasingly rewards growth and margin discipline together, not either one alone.

Q: What are the main value levers Bain highlights for healthcare IT?

A: Pricing and packaging (bundling, like-for-like increases), systematic cross-sell/upsell motion, and M&A to add product breadth or create cost synergies.

Q: Why does healthcare IT behave differently from typical horizontal SaaS?

A: In many healthcare workflows, buyers care most about measurable ROI: denial reduction, faster collections, lower admin effort, and reduced compliance risk. That makes procurement sharper and expansion harder to win without quantifiable impact.

Sources

Bain