High Potential For Dedicated Acute Care Information Systems Across Europe

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Article Date: 16 Sep 2008 - 13:00 PDT

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Acute care is particularly taxing for caregivers in hospitals as they have to deal with increased workloads, greater paperwork, shortages of staff and follow a template-based approach to care for their patients. Collectively, the entire workflow and documentation process in the acute care environment is very different from that of the other hospital departments.

Departmental acute care information systems have therefore emerged and, combined with the rest of the hospital's IT systems, have become the leading software feature in modern acute care departments.

"Improving operational efficiencies, primarily through better workflows, is a major driving force behind investments in acute care information systems (ACIS)," notes Frost & Sullivan Programme Leader Konstantinos Nikolopoulos. "Integrating acute care department systems to have single patient record - capturing information from the patient's entry in the hospital to his discharge - has become a common goal, especially when a high per cent of hospital admissions come from the acute care arena."

For many hospitals, the changes in acute care IT are related to a drive to connect various hospital departments and departmental software. Clinicians want to be able to enter data into the electronic records, and they want to import and export data from EMR/HIS systems to the acute care IT systems and vice-versa.

"This trend is one of the most significant factors in encouraging hospitals to examine their acute care IT policy," adds Nikolopoulos. "All these factors create an ideal environment for the use of clinical information systems, with the acute care information systems market in Europe set to benefit from such strong driving forces."

Healthcare organisations across Europe have their budgets pre-planned for specific activities, and acute care information system vendors recognise the lack of funding for acute care projects. The difficulty in securing funding, combined with the scarcity of internal resources, can cause long delays in the IT system sales cycle and even postpone projects. Low budgets and spending priorities will pose a major restraint in market expansion.

"The ROI for acute care systems may not be as clear as other systems such as picture archiving and communication system (PACS) and EMR because improvements in care achieved from implementing such systems may be difficult to measure," explains Nikolopoulos. "Vendors of ACIS solutions attempt to accommodate some form of ROI calculation in their marketing and sales efforts, but are not always successful in responding to the needs of multiple parties - from the executive to the doctor, to the nurse and IT personnel."

The ability of vendors to compete on price without sacrificing quality and services is one of the most important factors in the highly competitive European ACIS market. Vendors that can leverage their experience and demonstrate real value for money and high ROI will most certainly be in a competitive position.

If you are interested in a virtual brochure, which provides manufacturers, end users and other industry participants with an overview of the European acute care information systems market, then send an e-mail to Patrick Cairns, Corporate Communications, at pcairns_pr@frost.com, with your full name, company name, title, telephone number, company e-mail address, company website, city, state and country. Upon receipt of the above information, an overview will be sent to you by e-mail.

European Acute Care Information Systems Market is part of the Healthcare & Life Sciences IT Growth Partnership Services Programme, which also includes research in the following markets: Laboratory Information Systems in Europe, Clinical Information Systems in Europe - Oncology, National Programmes Supporting Healthcare IT in Europe and Clinical Information Systems in Europe - Cardiology. All research included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.

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