IT budgets continue to grow at hospitals and health systems--but that growth is not because of funds needed for electronic health records, according to an IDC Health Insights report.
The fact that only 25 percent of providers responding to the survey said that their budgets were growing because of EHRs shows the industry is in the "post-EHR era," according to an announcement from IDC Health Insights.
Forty percent of providers said their budgets are still growing, with many using the funds to expand mobile and analytics use in the cloud. In addition, "comfort levels" when it comes to cloud tech are growing, the report finds. About 40 percent of respondents said they were more comfortable with the cloud in 2015 than the year before.
"This report documents the movement by providers to the third platform, and across cloud, mobile, and big data technologies, we saw providers making significant investment in 2015, with more planned for 2016," research director Judy Hanover said in the announcement.
Analytics, patient engagement, customer relationship management and security also are adding to budget growth. Cybersecurity especially is going to lead to continued growth of spending in the year ahead, the report added.
A survey, conducted by HIMSS on behalf of application security company Veracode, recently found that 54 percent of providers are planning on budgeting more funds for cyberinsurance.
"As healthcare organizations ... face Web- and mobile-application security risks head on, they will need to make the monetary and time investments required to arrive at an understanding of the risks that cyberattackers pose to their organization," that report's authors said.
To learn more:
- get the report
- here's the announcement