Healthcare Investment Drives European HIS Market Growth

Increasing accountability pressures on governments and regulatory authorities to garner more investments into healthcare information technology (IT) adoption is boosting the European hospital information systems (HIS) market potential. These are the latest findings of Frost and Sullivan (Palo Alto, CA, USA), an international consulting firm.

The adoption rate of HIS solutions in 2008 in Europe varied from about 73% in Italy and Spain to 95% in Scandinavia; but although most hospitals in Europe have some kind of information system in place, very few have a fully integrated and functional HIS solutions installed. The challenge lies in the lack of adequate adaptable and flexible systems, leading to complex system architecture, reducing the utilization rates of HIS systems among hospital staff. Moreover, the large number of potential people to access or change the medical data makes security concerns an issue.

"The workflow environment in a hospital is more complex than other sectors and the data processing workflow could extend from several departments to across sectors and territories,” said senior research analyst S. Priyan Viswanathan. "Therefore, it is vital for the systems to be highly flexible and adaptable and encompass powerful, effective and user-friendly tools to support the end users.”

Frost & Sullivan have found that European HIS market earned revenues of over US$3.4 billion in 2008, and estimates this to reach well over $4 billion in 2015; the growth rate in this market is low because of the decreasing number of potential end users year after year. Additionally, the market's penetration rate has almost reached its saturation level; currently, the annual maintenance and replacements systems are the main sources of revenues for the vendors. Future revenues will also mainly depend on the recurring revenues from annual support and maintenance and replacement systems.

"Despite low investments from private and nonprofit hospitals, their numbers are on the rise and vendors should pitch for low-cost systems in these sectors,” concluded Mr. Priyan Viswanathan. "Vendors should promote low-cost systems such as remotely hosted systems and application service provider (ASP) systems to successfully cater to high potential consumers such as private and nonprofit hospitals.”

A HIS is a comprehensive, integrated information system designed to manage the administrative, financial, and clinical aspects of a hospital. This encompasses paper-based information processing as well as data processing machines. It can be composed of one or several software components with specialty-specific extensions, as well as of a large variety of subsystems in medical specialties (such as a Laboratory Information System or a Radiology Information System).

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