Given all the discussion surrounding topics such as privacy and “Meaningful Use”, it’s easy to forget that HITECH was rolled out last year as part of a larger economic stimulus package.
So while the debates on the details and difficulties of implementation are bound to continue well into the future, it’s nice to be able to point to the news that, when viewed simply as an attempt to spur the healthcare sector toward investing in new HIT, HITECH has been working quite nicely.
According to new research from Compass Intelligence, a market analytics company, the HIT market “is primed for continued growth over the next five years.” The company “expects health care organizations including hospitals, doctors’ offices, private practices, clinics and other health care organizations to spend an estimated $73.1 Billion this year on IT products, services and solutions. By 2014 expenditures are expected to climb to $85.0 Billion.”
In their eyes, HIT “spending is being driven by the government’s push for the market to adopt Electronic Health Records . . . backed by stimulus dollars, investments in systems and networks to support new applications, and the adoption of mobile applications, hardware, and other software to support patient care, patient records, and next generation medical diagnostics and imaging.
For Compass, the surge in investment, which is projected to increase by over $14 billion from 2010 to 2014 “is not just a matter of implementing new software.” Rather, it’s “expected to impact the entire health care IT ecosystem.”
Jeff Rowe blogs daily at HITECH Watch.
