HIMSS Analytics: Virtualization, voice recognition markets to watch

HIMSS Analytics' Autumn 2013 report, "Essentials of the U.S. Hospital IT Market," highlights the market potential and projected accelerated growth for virtualization software and speech recognition. The two technologies, both with historical compounded annual growth rates of 20 percent or greater, were characterized as having an "aggressive" adoption rate in the U.S. hospital marketplace compared to 20 other applications included in the report.

"The support applications profiled in this report can be categorized as standard business tools with an already high market penetration, so it's great to see that such advanced technologies like virtualization software and dictation with speech recognition are emerging as top support services with high growth potential," Jennifer Horowitz, senior director of research for HIMSS Analytics, said in an announcement.

Horowitz told FierceHealthIT that the report includes historical data from the HIMSS Analytics database, which itself includes a census of U.S. hospitals. She added that the report evaluates the trends they've seen in the past few years. Speech recognition has been implemented at 47 percent of the hospitals HIMSS surveyed, and with its CAGR still increasing, there's a lot of "upward room for growth," Horowitz said.

There are definite benefits to using dictation with speech recognition, and it's certainly a technology that can enhance patient care, Horowitz added.

In the HIMSS report, 22 applications covering six categories are profiled, including:

  • Health Information management (HIM) Applications
  • Document/Forms Management Applications
  • IS Security Applications
  • IS Infrastructure Applications
  • Ambulatory Applications
  • Home Health Applications

"With the historically high level of growth, partnered with the fact that less than 50 percent of the hospitals have implemented it so far--so many still don't have it--juxtaposing those two factors, they're definitely markets to watch in the future," Horowitz told FierceHealthIT.

Last October, researchers determined that desktop virtualization infrastructure (VDI) for cloud-based computing is expensive, but offers a return on investment in year four. Their study, published by BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, conducted a five-year cost-benefit analysis for installing 400 virtual machines (VMs) used by 1,100 people at the 910-bed Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. In 2012, the technology management firm Gartner noted that the number of healthcare providers installing desktop virtualization infrastructure is growing. 

To learn more:
- see the executive summary of the report (.pdf)
- here's the announcement