The great EHR market shakeout

...The EHR landscape, peppered with software programs that for reasons technological as well as proprietary or financially-driven do not interoperate, integrate or even interface with each other, will get better in time, of course, as most markets invariably do — but when?

...Indeed, the EHR market is “agitated” and “unstable” according to a report published in late July by Black Book. Based on Black Book’s and other firms’ research little doubt remains that many healthcare organizations are either planning to or are already in the process of switching EHR vendors. It’s worth noting that Black Book targeted replacement EHR buyers in its polling of 2,880 — and 81 percent of respondents are, in fact, planning to drop one EHR in favor of a newer model.

Against the backdrop of so many healthcare organizations looking to switch EHRs and, in so doing, considering a relatively small number of vendors, do the Black Book findings essentially foreshadow the market consolidation that so many people seem to be anticipating? The idea being that fewer EHR makers will survive but their products will be stronger, both more usable and interoperable than what exists today...