Cardiology IT and Consolidation: Will a Leader Emerge?

    OREM, UT, November 03, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Cardiology departments have hosted a variety of software solutions in the past to meet varying demands. A new report from KLAS reveals that the cardiology IT market is moving toward consolidation. The report, "Cardiology 2012: Will the Complete CVIS Please Stand Up?," explains that as a result of the trend toward consolidation providers are looking for a technology leader to step up and meet their needs. This report examines which vendors, providers feel are poised to lead the cardiology market, provide necessary functionality, and offer integration.

"Many cardiology vendors are vulnerable to replacement," said Monique Rasband, cardiology IT research director and author of the report. "While some vendors have many of the necessary pieces in place to be considered a complete CVIS solution, providers report that no vendor is doing all of them. All of the solutions are missing something."

The recent study asked providers to rate the completeness of their cardiology vendor solution on a 100-point scale. On average providers reported their cardiology system to be only 65 percent complete. Of those providers reporting that their vendor solution was incomplete, 51 percent said the main missing piece was clinical reporting. And, for those vendors offering reporting as part of their system, functionality often was lacking and providers said they want more.

Integration is another area where providers report vendor solutions are missing the mark. The desire for integration combined with the need for more reporting functionality leaves the door open for enterprise and non-traditional cardiology vendors to garner new customers.

"Cardiology reporting solutions by enterprise vendors Epic and Cerner are still in development. However, with the current state of reporting functionality, there would be little to dissuade a provider from seriously looking at an enterprise vendor investigating the added benefit integration brings," said Rasband.

Other providers are exploring additional ways to integrate the department by consolidating their cardiology solution with that of another vendor's solution that is already used in the department, such as radiology. Some vendors that are typically seen as radiology vendors--such as Carestream, DR Systems, Infinitt, and NovaRad--are entering the cardiology market.

Despite the churn and vulnerability of systems for replacement, not all of the changes in cardiology result in bad news. The report found that overall performance scores in cardiology are trending up for 7 out of the 10 ranked vendors this year. The vendors ranked in this years' cardiology IT study include Agfa, Digisonics, FUJIFILM, GE Healthcare, LUMEDX, McKesson, Merge (AMICAS), Philips, ScImage, and Siemens. Preliminary scores were also included for HeartIT and Wolters Kluwer.

To learn more about the Cardiology IT market, including the strengths and weaknesses of vendors' CVIS solutions, the report "Cardiology 2011: Will the Complete CVIS please stand up?" is available to healthcare providers online for a significant discount. To purchase the report, healthcare providers and vendors can visit www.KLASresearch.com/reports.

KLAS is a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors. KLAS' mission is to improve delivery, by independently measuring vendor performance for the benefit of our healthcare provider partners, consultants, investors, and vendors. Working together with executives from over 4500 hospitals and over 2500 clinics, KLAS delivers timely reports, trends, and statistics, which provide a solid overview of vendor performance in the industry. KLAS measures performance of software, professional services, medical equipment, and infrastructure vendors. For more information, go to www.KLASresearch.com, email [email protected], or call 1-800-920-4109 to speak with a KLAS representative. Follow KLAS on Twitter at www.twitter.com/KLASresearch.

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