The U.S. market for electronic health records is expected to reach about $6 billion by 2015, up from about $2.2 billion in 2009, according to a report from research and consulting firm MarketsandMarkets, Healthcare IT News reports.
The report predicts that the EHR market will experience a compound annual growth rate of about 18.1% through 2015, partially driven by federal initiatives to expand EHR adoption.
According to the report, more than 1,000 EHR vendors occupy the market. In 2010, Allscripts led the EHR market for physician offices with 15.7% of the market share, while MEDITECH led the hospital EHR market with 24.9% of the market share (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 6/14).
The report also noted that:
Hospitals and larger health systems typically use client-server based EHR systems;
Web-based EHR systems are gaining in popularity among smaller health care practices because of lower implementation costs; and
The development of interoperable EHR systems is one of the largest focus areas for health IT vendors (Herman, Becker’s Hospital Review, 6/14).