Posted by Pramod
Mahadevan
Technical Alliance Mgr.
For healthcare Independent Software Vendors, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the market is growing rapidly. As an example, look at the electronic medical record (EMR) segment: a recent analyst report predicts 18% annual growth in EMR spending from 2010 through 2015 which is proving to be accurate. The outlook is similar for segments such as picture archiving and information systems (PACS), point of care systems, and health information systems (HIS) for radiology, emergency, surgery, pharmacy, laboratory, and many other specialties.
But the bad news is the highly competitive and fragmented nature of the healthcare market—the EMR segment alone has more than 1,000 players. As a result, ISVs have to achieve competitive differentiation through not just product features, but the ability to meet stringent availability, security and performance requirements that is cost effective for the customer —or risk being overlooked in major procurements. The nature of the competition is also changing. In the past, ISVs won new business with features and functionality. Now, the battleground has shifted to IT issues such as availability, security, performance, compliance and user experience— areas where many ISVs have to invest time and resources on addressing infrastructure issues rather than innovation around their products.
That’s why the most successful healthcare ISVs are building on alliances with data center vendors such as VMware to offer joint solutions for hospitals, clinics, and physician offices. VMware Technology Alliance Partners in the healthcare space include both market leaders and innovative startups. By partnering with VMware, healthcare ISVs can offer validated virtualized solutions that address their customers’ key concerns about availability, scalability, reliability, and performance. VMware technology also provides deployment options: ISVs can deliver clinical applications on-premise or via the cloud.
VMware healthcare solutions address three primary areas: Private/Public Cloud for Healthcare, point of care solutions, and compliance and automation.
