By EVE YAP

DEMAND for IT professionals in the fast-moving consumer goods, health-care and pharmaceutical sectors was hot in the third quarter of this year.

Middle and senior-level practitioners adept at enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management as well as business analysts were sought after, said executive search firm Robert Walters in its report, Q3 IT Commerce & Industry Market Update For Telecoms & IT Vendors.

Also in demand: service delivery managers - those who ensure that vendors make good on hardware and software that have been promised in project roll-outs, said the quarterly report released last week.

Given the 'growing pipeline of opportunities', salaries for such positions ranged from $100,000 to $150,000 annually, said Roger Olofsson, 37, associate director of the firm's information technology specialist recruitment division.

On the IT hiring spurt, Roger said that companies recruiting had not experienced as drastic a downturn as other sectors and continued to expand in key markets in Asia Pacific.

'Many of them have identified Singapore as the regional hub from which to run their applications, IT infrastructures and data centres,' he said, explaining the increase in hires.

Against the backdrop of the recovering economy, one job spec stands out.

Apart from experience and technical credentials - for example, a Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert or Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer certifications - IT professionals are required to liaise with management on, say, budgets and stretching resources.

Take Serena Yong, 37, head of end-user computing at Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

Serena and her 12-strong team see to requests for notebooks and printers as well as helpdesk matters for SGH, the National Eye Centre and the National Cancer Centre.

'I also help the hospital to plan the IT budget, down to how many computers are due for replacement,' she said.

Ditto for Lawrence Loke, senior manager of SGH IT.

The 38-year-old makes sure that the IT systems the doctors and allied healthcare workers depend on do not fail. These include electronic radiology films that doctors call up in their clinics, medication stocks for the pharmacy and operating theatre bookings for surgeons.

He is also responsible for audits, budgeting and business continuity planning.

Both Serena and Lawrence, who have about 12 years experience each in the IT field, were recruited by Integrated Health Information Systems, the Health Ministry's overall IT arm, and deployed to SGH in April.

Both are also busy with new projects.

Serena hopes to get a portal for asset requests off the ground by the middle of next year. Hospital staff need not submit several paper requests for different sections and face approval bottlenecks. Instead, doctors and nurses can request for any hardware, from a printer to a BlackBerry, just once online.

For Lawrence, it is a new system that will allow doctors to order, say, radiology and laboratory tests digitally, saving the time for consultation.

'There is nothing better than knowing that patient care is improved directly and indirectly by IT,' he said.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.