Report Predicts Rapid Growth In U.S. Healthcare IT Market
By Trisha Leon, contributing writer
In a recent report, US Healthcare IT Market Outlook 2018, RNCOS business consultancy services’ analysts reveal that the U.S. healthcare IT market is slated to grow at a CAGR of nearly 20 percent from 2014 to 2018. The remarkable growth of this market will likely be driven by rapid introduction of new products, growing government support, and declining implementation cost of healthcare IT. Cloud computing will also boost growth.
Industry leaders believe this astonishing growth presents excellent opportunities for VARs and IT solutions providers and the time to act is now. Nathan Lord, product manager for ScanSource POS and Barcode, also believes healthcare facilities will be motivated to spend. He says, “Some forecasts indicate more than $34.5 billion will be spent on healthcare IT in North America in 2014 with that continuing to grow as much as 9 percent annually.”
Industry leaders also have opinions about which services and solutions provide the greatest opportunities for solutions providers. Robert Laughlin, president of Galaxy Control Systems, says, “IT systems and infrastructure is, and will continue to be a core technology focus for healthcare facilities for virtually all of their daily operations. This drives the need for on-going upgrades, maintenance and support which provides great opportunities for resellers with strong networking skillsets.”
John Grabowski, national sales and marketing manager of JVC says, “The need to maintain and enhance video and security systems continues to rise, which is driving the demand for smarter, high performance and cost efficient system solutions.”
Joan Morales, director of channel marketing, Axcient, says, “Budget allocation is across several key IT initiatives such as electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic medical records (EMRs), claims management and call centers. For MSPs that focus on healthcare, positioning services to help with systems integration, project management, and data protection/disaster recovery is a good move as these services go hand-in-hand with the large ticket purchases health organizations are planning.”
Vertical marketing manager for Honeywell Scanning and Mobility, Doug Brown, offers multiple points on which VARs can focus: “IT spending will begin to shift priority to mobility applications. Care collaboration voice call systems, secure texting, alarm fatigue management systems, automatic vitals data capture and analytics systems, and voice centric nursing workflow systems will explode as the top research targets for 2014.”
Brown adds, “There is a tremendous opportunity for channel partners to step up and provide hospitals with the trusted advisor professional services they will need to successfully integrate all of these unique software solutions on their smartphones and into their existing infrastructure. While hospitals are doing their research and perhaps running their pilots for their first converged device implementation, most U.S. hospitals are still actively purchasing additional healthcare bar code scanners and merging them together with mobile bar code printing on medical carts.”
The study further delves into the present regulatory environment related to the industry, which will continue to drive much of the growth. Privacy and security are areas in which VARs should become especially adept at providing solutions as they are of special concern to the healthcare industry. Peter Martini, chief operating officer, iboss Network Security, says, “Industry regulations are causing many healthcare organizations to revisit budgets or reallocate IT spend towards security. Privacy and security are a top priority in the healthcare industry, particularly as advanced malware, data breaches, and privacy issues escalate.”
Ajay Jain, president/CEO of Quantum Secure, says, “The healthcare market is reliant on IT infrastructure for daily operations and security, which calls for continual system maintenance and upgrades to help sustain compliance and reduce liabilities. Physical identity access management (PIAM) solutions provide software suppliers and their reseller partners with opportunity for new business development by cost-effectively unifying identity management and control with physical access control systems.”
In addition to this information, the report also includes the profiles of key industry players with their key financials, strength and weakness analysis, and recent activities. The research provides all the prerequisite information for intending clients looking to venture into these markets, and facilitates them to devise strategies while going for an investment/partnership in the U.S. healthcare IT industry.