Study Reports Heartlab as Third in CVIS Market
In a bit of blowing their own horn, Heartlab has issued a press release
noting an award from Frost & Sullivan and highlighting their number
three market share position in the cardiology PACS market.
showed Heartlab as the third largest provider of Cardiology PACS
solutions in the U.S. in 2004. With 17.8 percent for direct sales and
2.5 percent for indirect OEM sales (through its parent company, Agfa),
Heartlab has increased its share of the $166 million U.S. market by
more than eight percent from 2002, the last year that Frost &
Sullivan surveyed the market. “As the market continues to evolve,
Heartlab has emerged as the only viable modality independent solution
provider for Cardiology information systems,” said Robert Petrocelli,
Heartlab's CEO. “As the market has revealed in other healthcare areas,
there is a trend to consolidate until there are three or four potential
suppliers of a given technology. Heartlab, now the Cardiology Business
Unit for Agfa's HealthCare Business Group, is well positioned to grow
market share beyond 20 percent in the US and expand market share in
other global markets. The cardiology market will continue to evolve
worldwide, and the companies with small market shares will not survive.”
Frost applies an interesting (and to me rather arbitrary) segmentation
to cardiology information systems. In radiology, they've divided PACS
from RIS, which makes sense because those two categories of
applications have developed independently with separate sets of
vendors. Cardiology is different, there has never been the equivalent
of an RIS for diagnostic cardiology. Nor are cardiovascular services
simply adding image management to their otherwise automated
departments. The market need is for a cardiovascular information system
(CVIS) that includes both RIS and PACs functionality. So, most all
cardiology “PACS” vendors include RIS-like capabilities because the
customer can't get them anywhere else. Frost's division of the CVIS
market seems more of an artificial one driven by internal structure
than market need.
Grand Rounds 2:5
Be sure to check out Tony Chen's installment of Grand Rounds at hospital impact.
Hawaii Hospital Alerts 130,000 Patients of Missing Computer Drive
Oops. Wilcox Memorial Hospital on Kauai has the task of notifying 130,000 past and current patients that they have misplaced a computer drive containing private information.
Hospital spokeswoman Lani Yukimura said a backup drive, with files
going back 12 years, was found missing on Oct. 5. Yukimura said
hospital officials do not know if the “thumb drive” was stolen or
missing.
“Anything could have happened. We just don't know,” she said. “We wish this didn't happen. We totally regret it.”
Yukimura said the data drive does not contain medical information, but
has a listing of names, addresses, medical record numbers and Social
Security numbers.
One question that comes to mind is what procedures and documentation
was created in response to HIPAA security requirements to minimize the
risk of something like this happening?One hundred and thirty thousand.
Wow. Of course SS numbers are a prime target for identity thieves.
[Hat tip: iHealthBeat]
Remote Monitoring Vendor PCTI Snags Some Press
Vendor Patient Care Technologies, Inc. garners some press in this short piece in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.
operations] predicts such devices will soon be made widely available to
a consumer market with monitoring by a third-party team.
“It's great for people who want to keep tabs on their aging parent
and have some piece of mind that their parent is doing what they need
to do,” she said.
An interesting prediction, to be sure.
IBM Offers Access to Patents for Healthcare Vendors
In an effort to spur growth of the open source software movement in health care, IBM has offered access to some 45,000 patents royalty-free for vendors creating software around open source standards.
between software systems, which could help hospitals and schools better
integrate patient and student records. Interoperable standards have
been stymied because developers can't use technology based on patents
held by companies invested in proprietary systems, said Sean C. Rush,
general manager of the IBM Global Education Industry unit in Waltham.
This move is in line with IBM's strategy to commiditize the software and generate revenue on services. Here's more on HealthNex, an IBM blog about health care IT.
[Hat tip: FierceHealthcare]
