Despite a PACS imaging technology market that is relatively saturated, a growing need for additional functionality around imaging management and distribution is leading healthcare organizations to look to upgrade technology it already has in place, according to the latest HIMSS Analytics Essentials Brief--the "2014 Imaging Technology Study."
The need for additional functionality was cited as a primary driver by 68 percent of survey respondents who plan to purchase a new system, upgrade or replace their current system, according to the study.
One focus of the study was enterprise image viewing functionality.
"With everything that is happening with the HITECH Act and Meaningful Use we wanted to focus on that next level of technology," HIMSS Analytics Research Director, Brendan FitzGerald told FierceMedicalImaging. "Sharing images--not only within departments but across organizations--is going to be vitally important."
One of the biggest surprises of the study, Fitzgerald said, was the extent to which organizations have started to use enterprise image viewing functionality.
A recent analysis by Frost & Sullivan reported that while a saturated PACS segment is slowing growth in the U.S. imaging informatics market, enterprise medical imaging viewers products are consolidating their place as a core component in the medical imaging informatics ecosystem.
About half of the respondents to the HIMSS survey said they use some sort of enterprise image viewing system, according to Fitzgerald.
"I was expecting it to be a little lower for the reason that while this certainly isn't a new technology, organizations have been focusing on other critical areas," he said. "But this is a good sign in terms of where the market is headed."
Another key finding, Fitzgerald said, is that while the use of mobile technology as a vehicle for making images accessible is somewhat limited at the moment, use of those technologies will grow significantly over the next several years. For example, 8.2. percent of respondents currently make images accessible through smartphones, but that number is expected to increase to about 35 percent within two years. And 17.2 percent of respondents make images accessible through tablets, a number that is expected to increase to 38.8 percent.
Images also increasingly are being made available through image-enabled electronic health records.
"Tablets, smartphones and image-enabled EHRs are the future growth areas [when it comes to image access]," Fitzgerald said. "It would be very interesting to do this study a year from new and see where people are and how these numbers have changed."
To learn more:
- see the announcement from HIMSS analytics
- see the analysis from Frost & Sullivan