Health IT spending gathers pace

LONDON – The budgetary and performance challenges facing the healthcare industry will present a large opportunity for information communications technology (ICT) vendors in 2014, says Ovum. Despite costs and efficiency remaining a major battleground, ICT spending overall remains healthy, with health informatics identified as a major investment priority for the next few years.

According to Ovum’s 2013 ICT Enterprise Insights*, more than 50 percent of survey respondents reported budget increases ranging from 1 to 6 percent. At the same time, latest forecasts** from the global analysts predict that the healthcare industry will generate global ICT revenues of US$185bn by 2018, up from US$110bn at the end of 2012, with a CAGR of 8 percent. Government incentives continue to spur spending, as does the long journey towards effective EHRs, data digitization and the rise of patient relationship management (PRM). Business intelligence (BI) and analytics spending will also see increased traction over the next few years, with a positive impact on adjacent areas such as computer assisted coding (CAC), clinical documentation improvement (CDI) and Big Data, according to Ovum’s 2014 Trends to Watch***.

“Although many healthcare systems face overall tightening budgets, public systems in particular, our enterprise survey and various healthcare organizations' reported results show significantly different growth rates in projected ICT spending,” explains Charlotte Davies, head of Ovum’s healthcare technology practice. “Overall, we believe that attitudes to ICT in healthcare are reaching a tipping point, as more budget holders realize its intrinsic value and necessity to effective healthcare transformation and increased efficiency, government project failures notwithstanding.”

However, the daunting aggregate sum of these investments means customers will increasingly look for proven healthcare business expertise, flexibility and competitive pricing from vendors.

“The past year has seen a slew of cloud-based vendors either entering the market or ramping up their healthcare portfolios and activity. This is injecting agile momentum into the vendor market and spurring organizations to seek the economies of scale and flexibility offered by cloud-based solutions,” comments Davies. “As ICT becomes embedded into service transformation, many providers will also look to greater co-creation in order to retain and develop in-house IP. This provides an opportunity for smaller, more agile local vendors and poses a threat to larger vendors that are slow to adapt.”

* Ovum 2013 ICT Enterprise Insights in the Healthcare Industry (September 2013)

** Ovum, Healthcare Technology Spending Through 2018: Source Segmentation (December 2013)

*** Ovum’s 2014 Trends to Watch  CAMPO