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The Healthcare Industry: A Promising Market for Solutions and Services

Introduction

InfoTrends has published a vertical market study exploring solutions and services within the legal, educational, healthcare, and financial services industries. The responses from professionals in each of these industries have been examined to illuminate opportunities and examine ways of overcoming obstacles relative to each market. The study indicates that the healthcare market holds great potential for providers of solutions and services.

Overview of the Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry consists of more than 750,000 establishments in the United States, including practitioners’ offices, hospitals, home healthcare services, elderly care, and day care services. From medical records and forms that are manually filled out to insurance claims, there is a lot of paper that is printed, copied, written on, and transferred. Departments and their respective documents include:

• Customer Records: contracts, forms, authorizations, contact reports, and e-mail
• Human Resources: resumes, contracts, expense reports, vacation requests, and reviews
• Legal: contracts, e-discovery, and auditing
• Purchasing: purchase orders, receiving slips, invoices, and confirmations
• Product Management: designs, drawings, data sheets, and contracts

While the industry is paper intensive, many respondents are trying to make the transition from paper to digital. We are also seeing compliance initiatives encouraging the use of electronic information. Today’s solutions can capture, track, and audit information while also ensuring that standards are being met. One top-of-mind initiative that directly affects the industry specifically concerns electronic medical records.

Reasons for Investing in Technology

Among the healthcare respondents, the most common reasons for investing in hardware technology were to increase productivity (81.5%), to lower costs (67.7%), and to address security requirements (60%). Due to the nature of the documents handled by healthcare companies, it is not surprising that many are interested in security as the documents handled by healthcare companies often contain personal and/or sensitive customer information.  In terms of software, nearly 40% of respondents had already invested in document management, printer/copier administration and scanning/data capture. This makes perfect sense considering the large amount of forms and documentation that healthcare companies must maintain and organize. 

The Future

Out of the four vertical markets surveyed, healthcare respondents showed a greater adoption rate for overall solutions and services. Healthcare respondents who had not yet adopted these solutions and services were particularly likely to be considering them. This suggests that the industry in general is quickly moving toward electronic solutions that help streamline business needs. Governmental initiatives, such as electronic health records, will also help stimulate an accelerated growth of solutions related to MFP devices.

To maximize the potential of this market, MPS vendors must continue to educate those in the healthcare industry on the value of their solutions. These solutions can help streamline business processes and create efficiencies in the healthcare space with their scanning, electronic workflow, and output management capabilities. MPS vendors must market the capabilities of their devices so healthcare businesses can see how these devices can meet requirements for electronic workflow initiatives.

For More Information

The full vertical market study from which this information was extracted, entitled Solutions and Services in the Education, Financial, Healthcare and Legal Markets, as well as the report focusing on the healthcare industry, Solutions and Services in the Healthcare Market, are available for purchase in our online store.