French Healthcare Systems to Offer Considerable Scope for Clinical Information Systems

Frost: The increasing need to enhance patient safety and provide high-quality, cost-effective healthcare has contributed to the rising demand for IT systems (particularly clinical information systems) in the French healthcare industry.

The increasing use of IT in the healthcare sector is anticipated to help avoid medical errors, improve decision-making processes, minimise patients’ exposure to unnecessary ionising radiation and reduce the duration of treatment and hospitalisation, thereby ensuring high-quality patient care.The shift in focus from administrative systems modules to clinical systems (such as picture archiving and communications systems (PACS), order entry systems and electronic medical records (EMR)) to improve healthcare delivery processes, used in tandem with the latest technologies in diagnostics and treatment modalities, is likely to further drive the demand for IT solutions.

These systems prevent wasteful duplication of costly investigations, treatments and drug prescriptions, apart from preventing adverse events which may prolong the length of stay in hospitals and thereby increase costs. As the stakeholders in the industry (which include health authorities, the hospital management and payer organisations) increasingly acknowledge the importance of IT solutions, the demand for IT applications in healthcare management is expected to increase. Additionally, the mounting need for efficient management of voluminous clinical data will fuel the demand for IT applications.

The availability of scalable IT solutions to suit different requirements is boosting their acquisition by the healthcare industry. Vendors are providing customised implementation strategies involving workflow re-engineering using highly flexible solutions that can be integrated with existing modalities and systems, thereby further spurring the demand for IT applications.

The implementation of the activity-based funding system in 2004, which is driving hospitals to optimise their patient information systems will further lead to increased acquisition of IT systems. Supported by these trends, the French healthcare IT market is projected to increase from $726.0 million in 2004 to $1,034.0 million in 2008.

While IT applications are proving to be beneficial, obtaining government buy-in into an integrated healthcare IT network plan and assuring justifiable returns on healthcare IT investments are proving to be difficult. Further, decision makers in the French healthcare industry as well as the Ministry and the departments of health are confronted with the need to overcome budgetary deficits.

The procedure followed by public sector hospitals, to invite European tenders for IT investments above a certain level, is resulting in the slow implementation of IT applications. “Moreover, there is no definite budgetary allocation and, therefore, targeting the private sector is an easier prospect, as there is no involvement of regulatory bodies..

More: Analysis of the French Healthcare IT Markets

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