Vendor CEO: Final Report

Vendors continue to identify data security technology as important to their healthcare clients. Last year, nearly half of respondents (48 percent) indicated data security technology was important to their clients. This year, it was cited by 49 percent of respondents, making it the most frequently cited technology in this category. Intranet continues to hold the number two spot, identified by 46 percent of respondents, compared with 40 percent last year. Extranets were cited by 42 percent of respondents, making it the third most identified technology. Last year’s third-place response, high-speed networks, fell to fourth place. Vendors see speech recognition and thin clients as less important than in the past; both of these items show a 14 percentage-point decrease compared to last year’s data.

Vendors continue to predict that data security and wireless information appliances will be among the most important technologies for their clients in the next two years. Wireless information systems were identified by the most respondents (55 percent), followed by data security technologies (51 percent). Each category was cited by 50 percent of respondents in 2002. Web-enabled business transactions ranked third, identified by 45 percent of respondents. This item ranked fifth last year. Future interest in both extranets and handheld personal digital assistants, last year’s second and third place responses, declined. However, among survey respondents, handheld personal digital assistants are projected to be more important in the future than they are today (27 percent today vs. 37 percent in two years). This trend also holds true for wireless information systems (40 percent today vs. 55 percent in two years) and speech recognition (10 percent today vs. 21 percent in the future).