IDC forecasts that the IT investment market size of China healthcare industry will reach CNY33.65 billion (US$5.48 billion) in 2017, with a CAGR of 14.5% during 2012-2017. The growth rate in the next five years is expected to be higher than the average level of China's IT market.
According to IDC's China Healthcare Industry IT Solution 2013-2017 Forecast and Analysis, China's healthcare industry invested CNY17.08 billion in IT solutions in 2012, an increase of 16.6% compared with 2011.
In 2012, the China government continued to further develop healthcare reforms, with the central and local governments increasing their investments in healthcare informationization to facilitate the development of this sector.
There were many information upgrade projects, with clinical healthcare information systems entering into a rapid development period, systems for various special diseases growing quickly, EMR popularization rate increasing and application level constantly improving.
Large hospitals began to build clinical data centers and adopt mobile nursing, mobile doctor, mobile healthcare administration and other systems, while an increasing number of hospitals were developing specific implementation schedules for various informationization construction projects or in the process of testing; and Internet of things (IoT) systems applied to patient management, drug management and asset management also grew quickly.
In 2013, mobile applications have become the key feature in hospital informationization projects. Mobile applications are not only driving the development and implementation of software systems, but also network upgrading, rapid growth of intelligent terminal market and upgrading of server-side devices. Other sectors, such as integrated hospital platform construction and specific disease system construction, have also maintained high-speed growth.
During the new round of hospital informationization construction boom, hospital IT infrastructures are continuously upgrading and improving: EMR and clinical healthcare data centers promote the upgrading of servers and storage; mobile application and IoT promote wireless network construction and infrastructure network upgrading as well as PPC, personal digital assistant (PDA) and other intelligent terminals growth, thereby quickening the growth of device management, safety management, BYOD management and other software systems.
"In 2012, various clinical healthcare systems continued to grow rapidly. EMR systems became more popular. Mobile applications, IoT application and system integration service also grew rapidly. These drove the growth of servers, storage, networks and various intelligent terminals."
"IDC expects hospital clinical healthcare system to accelerate its growth in the next five years. Mobile applications, clinical data centers, clinical application systems for special faculties or a certain disease category and clinical pathway systems will gradually become the mainstream of informationization," said Leon Xiao, senior research manager, Vertical Industry Research and Consulting, IDC China.
