As if this was a major announcement, but EMR is leading the growth in the healthcare IT market according to a report by Scientia Advisors:

A new report from Scientia Advisors says health IT is the fastest-growing segment of what the Cambridge, Mass., management advisory company calls a $1 trillion global healthcare products marketplace. Health IT currently is growing at an 11 percent annual rate, and solid growth should continue at least through 2013, which would be the third year of the federal EMR stimulus program here in the States, the Scientia report forecasts. In that time frame, health IT will increase its market share by a quarter, to 5 percent of global healthcare products sales from the current 4 percent.

They also predicted that established EMR vendors should benefit the most from increased spending. “Leading players with large installed bases, proven products, and streamlined routes to meaningful use of EHRs are likely to gain share,” Scientia says.

There’s no doubt they’re going to gain major market share. Add in major mergers and acquisitions by the major players and these companies are going to become huge. Can you imagine the support doctors are going to get from these major EMR vendors?

At the same meeting where Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, commented about healthcare IT, there was another interesting comment by Eric Lander about the state of researching EMR and healthcare IT. Here’s his comment:

“My sense is that we don’t respect this stuff,” said PCAST co-chair Eric Lander. “We respect the cancer genome, but not checklists. What do we need to do to send a signal to the next generation of researchers that this is a high-class, worthy thing to do? What would it take to move the needle?”

I agree. I’ve done the searching through the journals for well done EMR research and found very little. Not that research is the end all be all, but it can provide insight that can’t be found other ways.