Providers will broaden and deepen their adoption of clinical technology across all major clinical solution categories over the next year, according to an annual study from Gantry Group, Provider Clinical Technology Expenditures 2007.

The results show that providers are making significant investments in clinical technology, with nearly half allocating 40 percent or more of their current technology budget to these solutions.

The study concludes that by the end of 2008, more than 80 percent of provider facilities will be invested in:

• Digital medical imaging
• Medication management/ ePrescribing
• RFID patient identification/drug distribution
• EMR/EHR
• Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE)
• Mobile applications (e.g. charge capture, rounding, prescriptions)
• Patient documentation
• Patient care planning solutions

For all clinical applications, providers will increasingly and rapidly adopt on-premise vendor solutions over the next 12 months. In general, providers will move away from custom in-house solutions and ASP vendor solutions, and drastically decrease their commitments to outsourcers.

Executives from 43 hospitals participated in this study, comprised of: VP/director case management (18 percent); CIO/CTOs (12 percent); VP Nursing (9 percent); CEOs (8 percent); and CFOs (8 percent). Healthcare facilities of all sizes were represented in the study, ranging from 150 to more than 1,000 beds. Study response was predominantly drawn from hospital systems (49 percent) and independent hospitals (34 percent).