New leadership steps up at EHR association

June 16, 2010 | Bernie Monegain, Editor

CHICAGO – Carl Dvorak, executive vice president of Epic Systems, has been elected chairman of the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association, and Charles Jarvis, vice president of healthcare services and government relations for NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, has been elected to the vice chair.

The EHR Association announced its new chair and vice chair June 16, along with executive committee election results based on voting by the full membership during May and June.

The Association is composed of 44 companies that supply the majority of EHRs in use in hospitals and physicians practices in the United States.

Dvorak was a founding member of the association, now in its fifth year. He also served on the executive committee from 2004 to 2006, and was re-elected in 2009.

Jarvis was first elected to the executive committee in 2007 and has also served as chair of the Communications Workgroup, the Government Initiatives Workgroup and the Ambulatory Special Interest Group.

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Enterprise HIE market poised to soar

FRAMINGHAM, MA – A recent study of health information exchange solution vendors shows enterprise HIEs serving integrated delivery networks, health, or hospital systems will be the fastest-growing market segment of HIE organizations in the coming two years.

The study, "Vendor Assessment: Industry Short List for Health Information Exchange Technologies," was conducted by IDC Health Insights, a Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm.

IDC researchers said enterprise HIEs are unlike regional health information organizations (RHIOs) and statewide or national HIEs, because they can establish a sustainable business model and are not as encumbered by organizational and data governance issues.

For the study, IDC evaluated 14 healthcare IT vendors,  including Axolotl, Browsersoft/Open HRE, Carefx, dbMotion, eClinicalWorks, InterSystems, MEDecision, Medicity, MEDSEEK, Microsoft, Oracle, Orion Health, PatientKeeper, and RelayHealth.

IDC researchers said they chose the vendors because they are representative of the market and include leaders in the industry.

According to Lynne Dunbrack, program director at IDC Health Insights, the HIE vendor market is volatile with new companies entering the market and with market consolidation.

"We can expect dramatic changes in the next 12 to 18 months as HIE technologies become a commodity and dominant players acquire their way into a crowded market currently made up of many small, privately held vendors," she said.

IDC researchers said they put the vendors through a rigorous assessment for the study that centers around three principles IDC Insights says are critical in today's selection of an IT supplier: fact-based research, industry focus, and evaluation transparency.

IDC said the analysis is intended to help providers find the vendor best suited to their organization's existing IT environment and business needs.

Leaders of Informatics Corporation of America said the report demonstrates the enormous growth potential of health information exchanges (HIEs) in the next two years.

"The IDC report predicts the paradigm shift toward collaborative care through HIE models, which we see as a pivotal opportunity to drive improvements in the quality of medical care delivery and patient outcomes," said Gary Zegiestowsky, CEO of Informatics Corporation of America.

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