Decentralisation of Spanish Regions to Spur Investment in Healthcare IT Infrastructure.

Frost: IT Systems Uptake to Hinge on Growing Importance of the Concept of Paperless Hospitals. The transfer of healthcare competencies from the state to the 17 autonomous regions in Spain is enabling regional authorities to make independent decisions regarding the modernisation of healthcare IT. Even as this boosts the uptake of IT applications in healthcare management, the concept of paperless hospitals with their promise of enhanced workflows, will support the implementation of IT systems by upcoming hospitals.

With over 90.0 per cent of the hospitals in Spain possessing legacy systems, which are difficult to integrate with new IT solutions, a complete revamp of IT solutions is anticipated.

Effective healthcare IT applications will also help reduce transcriptions costs, improve the utilisation of radiology and laboratory services and minimise adverse drug events. Accordingly, ongoing efforts to control healthcare delivery costs are set to drive both state and regional governments to support the expanded use of IT applications in the healthcare industry.

The acquisition of IT systems will further be driven by the implementation of the law on ‘cohesion and quality of the national health system’, which has resulted in regional authorities seeking to implement systems that facilitate seamless data flow with increased efficiency.

There are indications that the new government might increase the healthcare expenditure, which currently remains lower than the average healthcare expenditure of the top 15 European countries. This might lead to further investment in modernisation projects by the regional authorities, thereby providing greater scope for the growth of the healthcare IT markets in Spain.

The need to develop primary healthcare has spurred regions such as Andalucia, Murcia and Extremadura to invest in projects to connect the primary and the secondary health centres. Encouraged by these trends, other regions are also likely to invest in similar IT-based projects, thereby leading to a rise in revenues.

While initial market growth is likely to be influenced by local governments’ initiatives to integrate hospital and primary care facilities, the rising demand for state-of-the-art clinical systems will promote market growth over the long term. Market revenues are expected to grow from $220.0 million in 2004 to $332.0 million by 2008. In particular, strong growth is forecast for market segments such as electronic medical records (EMR), picture archiving communications (PACS) and radiology information systems (RIS).

Analysis of the Spanish Healthcare IT Markets Publ 20060116