Healthcare IT – Gartner

I am listening to a Gartner webinar on Healthcare IT which is a pitch to vendors on sponsoring an upcoming event of theirs.  Here are a few comments which I thought were interesting and some of you might care about:

• Innovation in IT is critical for healthcare.
• Healthcare IT will be the fastest growing vertical through 2008.
• Based on a live poll of the attendees on what companies are looking for in making technology decisions, the top 3 factors (which were my votes) were:
  • Ability to integrate w/ existing systems
  • Lowest total cost of ownership
  • High quality service
• Healthcare providers buy based on references.  (more than others??)
• Consumer confidence in online tools is very low.  Phone is #1 preferred mode of communication.  Relationship between payors and patients outside of phone is still limited with fear of lack of security.
• Current pain points (insurers and providers):
  • Business intelligence – how to get quality information from all their data
  • Integration
  • Claims
  • Physicians – how to keep them happy
  • Agility
• How to best engage prospects with an IT solution:
  • Case studies
  • Referrals
  • Demonstrate a good fit to them

Not too helpful for those of you that are consumers, but for those of you developing consumer solutions to address the market, this might be helpful.