The US healthcare information technologies (IT) market currently tops US$46 billion. US value-added resellers predict it will offer the greatest opportunity for growth in the next three years, with healthcare providers making up the largest industry segment and payer organisations (insurers) the fastest growing. Software and IT services will be the biggest beneficiaries of healthcare IT spending.
Two issues that will define the Healthcare IT landscape are:
- Privacy of patient data (guided by Federal HIPAA regulation)
- Increased awareness and monitoring of patient safety, through IT solutions to reduce medical errors and technology to monitor patients such as RFID.
There is growing focus on the implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHR). Forty per cent of hospitals have signed a contract for an EHR system or have actually initiated installation. Almost one-quarter more have plans to implement an EHR.
In November of 2005, the US Department of Health and Human Services awarded four contracts to consortia (led by VARs and technology vendors) within a National Health Information Network that will work with local healthcare groups to set standards and develop infrastructure for Regional Health Information Organisations (RHIOs), the building-blocks to an integrated health records exchange systems in the long-term.
Among the top technologies that hospitals have already implemented are high-speed networks, wireless information systems, and intranets. On hospitals' ‘IT wish lists’ for the next few years are:
- Single-sign-on identity management software
- Bar coding
- Speech recognition
- PDA data management
- Improvement of hospital websites, including physician portals and offering patients the ability to schedule appointments online
The issue is not whether the technologies would improve care or bring down healthcare costs, but how insurers, patients, doctors, and employers would foot the bill for them.
As healthcare costs rise to an estimated 25 per cent of GDP within a few decades, health IT could be the key to increasing efficiency and enhancing quality while controlling expenses.
Securing the funding is difficult in a fragmented market like the US, where a variety of government programs, private insurers, and individual patients pay healthcare providers. Often the best technological innovation comes from within ‘closed systems’ such as the government's Veterans' Administration or Kaiser Permanente, a leading Health Maintenance Organisation (HMO) in California.
Although the Federal Government plays a key policy role and is a major purchaser of technology, it may not be enough to encourage large-scale adoption of health IT with a 2006 proposed health IT budget of just US$169 million.
Success factors for entry:
- Know who wants and needs the solution being proffered. For example, IT needs within doctors' offices and medical groups are less integrated and less complex than those of hospitals. Small offices are looking for basic functionality such as document management and automation, whereas hospitals are more concerned with the larger privacy issues stemming from HIPAA.
- Recognise and plan for the long-term and the typically slow demand cycles that characterise the healthcare sector.
- Establish strong track record and references within Australia or elsewhere.
Centres for Medicare & Medicaid Services – www.cms.hhs.gov
Healthcare Informatics (electronic) – www.healthcare-informatics.com
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society – www.himss.org
National Institutes of Health – www.nih.gov