News Feature | January 7, 2014

HIT Market: 7 Percent Growth In 2014

Source: Health IT Outcomes
Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

Report predicts strong growth in the North American health information technology market for 2014

Research and Markets’ North American Healthcare IT Market by Application Delivery Mode & Component – Forecasts to 2017 calls for huge growth in the HIT Market for 2014. According to the books description, “Healthcare information technology (HCIT) has emerged as a promising development to transform the paper-based healthcare system into a digitized one. HCIT also gives clinicians real-time access to patient data, and provides them with support to make the best possible decisions. It streamlines processes and reduces administrative overhead. The impact of IT on healthcare in the past decade has been modest, despite the huge potential.

“The North American healthcare IT market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 7.4 percent to reach $31.3 billion by 2017 from $21.9 billion in 2012 due to the significant demand for clinical information technology, administrative solutions, and services.”

 Healthcare IT News writes the report indicates, “Healthcare information technology has emerged as a promising development to transform the paper-based healthcare system into a digitized one. HCIT also gives clinicians real-time access to patient data, and provides them with support to make the best possible decisions. It streamlines processes and reduces administrative overhead. The impact of IT on healthcare in the past decade has been modest, despite the huge potential.

The authors feel factors driving the growth of the healthcare IT market in North America include “the rise in pressure to cut healthcare costs, growing demand to integrate healthcare systems, high rate of return on investment, financial support from the U.S. government, government initiatives (e-health, health connect, pay-for-performance (P4P) program, e-Health Ontario and Alberta Netcare), rise in aging population, growing demand for CPOE adoption in order to reduce medication errors, and rise in incidences of chronic disorders.”

growing pressure to cut healthcare costs, growing demand to integrate healthcare systems, high rate of return on investment while using healthcare systems, financial support from the U.S. government, and government initiatives. In addition, rise in aging population, growing demand for CPOE adoption, and rise in incidences of chronic disorders will also propel the market.”

Restricting the growth of HIT, according to the report, are “the high cost of healthcare IT solutions, high maintenance and service costs, interoperability issues, shortage of healthcare IT professionals, poor standard healthcare protocols such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and unprecedented growing incidences of data breaches of patient information.”

The United States accounts for the highest share (72.6 percent) of the North American healthcare IT market and it’s expected to reach $22.6 billion by 2017, as compared with $15.9 billion in 2012. The Research and Markets report goes on to identify the key players in the market as: Cerner Corporation, Epic, Carestream Health, Inc., McKesson Corporation, Athenahealth, Inc., Siemens Healthcare, Medical Information System, Inc., Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc., GE Healthcare, NextGen Healthcare Information System, LLC, Novarad Corporation, Philips Healthcare, and Hewlett-Packard.

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