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The EMR market is consolidating on two big vendors: Epic and Cerner. Depending on how you measure it (Hospitals on a system or Medical Records under management), either Cerner or Epic is #1 and the other is #2. At this point, in the U.S., it is almost impossible for a newcomer to break into the market. There are many companies out there slowly losing market share to Epic or Cerner. Allscripts, Nextgen, McKesson/HBOC, GE, and others. Some are big, well-funded companies, others are more like startups with OK funding. Most of them are falling by the wayside, casualties to the bitter Epic/Cerner market war. The HITECH act really exacerbated this point by accelerating spending on EMR's since 2008. Meaningful Use meant that a lot of homegrown systems had to be replaced, simply because hospitals couldn't keep up with the regulation and complaince. Likewise, smaller companies had to spend more money on compliance than adding features and also faded. Sure, there are plenty of Allscripts and HBOC customers out there, but their number is shrinking, not growing. In a way it's a shame, because the two biggest vendors each have critical flaws. Cerner has a decent store in Oracle, but is hobbled by reliance on its own homegrown language for integration and middleware. The language is CCL and is like a cross between PL/SQL and TCL with HL7 Domain knowledge thrown in. Epic has an ancient store with
Caché, which is really MUMPS with some OO and relational hooks tossed in. Cerner excels at customization, while Epic excels at disciplined project implementation. You can browbeat Cerner into giving you what you want, but you can implement Epic pretty much close to on time and close to budget with an impressive reliability. Neither system really wants to interoperate with the other. It can be done, but it takes a months-long project with specialists writing HL7 interfaces to pass demographic, lab, and document data between each system. And this interoperability, once established, doesn't really help the patient. Docs can see orders entered in Cerner Powerchart displayed in Epic Hyperspace, but the patient doesn't necessarily get access to either the order or the result unless it goes to either system's portal. Finally, you have to realize that you are dealing with a very powerful and conservative management culture. Many Silicon Valley startups with whizbang solutions have foundered when they run up against the entrenched incumbents. Well-funded companies with highly competent engineers have failed because they don't have the patience to spend a couple of decades building up a user base. Investors realize that they can get more bang for their buck elsewhere and leave the game. If you even want to make a dent, you have to be willing to spend at least 15 years and untold amounts of money just trying to take on the big guys. If you're going against a market with relatively short turnarounds, like a calendaring app or even a game console, you have a shot. If you're going against a market that is very conservative and waits at least a decade before reevaluating installed systems, you have a very tough row to hoe. Ultimately, at least in the U.S., I think that implementing a new EMR is a sucker's game. You can spend millions and lose. In New Zealand, the market is different at this point, but how long can they resist the network effects of the big vendors? Cerner and Epic are currently battling it out in Australia, and will exert pressure in NZ once that market is settled. I know for a fact that Cerner went after NZ in the late 90's but pulled back after it became clear that entrenched corruption in the NZ procurement system would determine the winner. I don't have names and places for you, but I was in Sydney at the time and remember the disappointment of the executive team when they realized that NZ at that point was not a genuinely open market. You have mentioned in another post that you are concentrating just on records, and avoiding the extra complexity of the other systems in terms of patient management, practice management, supply management, etc… With all due respect, I think you are being naïve. A modern EMR system has to take into account the entire needs of the practice and how to manage it. When a health care practice is spending a buck, they want to get as much out of that dollar as possible. If vendor A is offering "just records", but vendor B is offering records plus practice management, they will go with vendor B. Every time. In any case, I wish you the best of luck. I have a lot of experience in this sector and would be happy to share my knowledge with you. |
Good point, here all hospitals use software from Orion Health, which is an NZ company - They have a really good hold on the market and I don't see that changing.
> You have mentioned in another post that you are concentrating just on records, … With all due respect, I think you are being naïve.
That thought has definitely crossed my mind. It's a tricky puzzle - part of the reason I think healthcare software is so hard, is that current systems are so monolithic - they do it all. To compete, you need to do it all as well. This impedes improvement, if you know how to build a fantastic appointment system, why should you have to also build invoicing systems? You have to bite off more than you can chew.
I don't really have an answer to this problem, but my approach is to break up the problem as much as possible into smaller parts.