Vendor CEO: Final Report

Respondents identified high-speed networks (54 percent), data security (49 percent), and bar coding (43 percent) most frequently when asked to identify the technologies they considered most important to their healthcare clients currently. High-speed networks and bar coding technology showed the greatest increases compared to 2003 results, while the largest decreases were observed for extranet and data warehouse.

When asked to indicate which technologies they considered most important to their healthcare clients in the next two years, wireless information systems (60 percent), web-enabled clinical processes (46 percent), and web-enabled business transactions (44 percent) were most frequently cited by survey respondents.

Comparing current versus future importance of technologies, speech recognition is expected to become considerably more important for respondents’ healthcare clients. Only six percent of respondents indicated that speech recognition is among the most important technologies currently; however, 32 percent indicated that this technology will be among the most important in the next two years. Web-enabled clinical processes and wireless information systems are also expected to rise significantly in importance in the next two years.