Cost and performance challenges facing healthcare globally will create “a large opportunity” for ICT vendors next year, a report has found.
Analysts Ovum surveyed 6,500 decision makers from over 60 countries about their IT spending. The firm found current levels of spending to be “healthy” and that over half of respondents are planning budget increases of between 1% and 6% in 2014.
It also predicts that global healthcare ITC revenues will hit $185 billion (£113 billion) by 2018 – up from $110 billion at the end of 2012. That would mean a compound annual growth rate of 8%.
Areas like business intelligence and analytics are likely to “gain traction”, as well as areas such as coding and big data. However, it will be government spending on electronic medical records (EMR), data digitisation and patient relationship management that has the most impact.
Charlotte Davies, head of Ovum’s healthcare technology practice, said: “Overall, we believe that attitudes to ICT in healthcare are reaching a tipping point, as more budget holders realise its intrinsic value and necessity to effective healthcare transformation and increased efficiency, government project failures notwithstanding.”
Another report published this week has singled out the global EMR market as area set for particularly strong growth. GlobalData, a consultancy, estimates that sales will increase from $10.6 billion in 2012 to $17 billion by 2017, at a CAGR of 9.8%.
US provider McKesson was thought to have the largest healthcare IT revenue in 2012 at $3.3 billion, followed by Cerner ($2.7 billion) and Allscripts ($1.5 billion).
Date: Feb 10, 2014