An Information Week Article summarizing a February, 2014 survey of 322 technology professionals working for healthcare providers in North America identified the top three IT priorities as:

• Meeting Meaningful Use Stage 2 criteria,
• Implementing ICD-10, and
• Working to qualify as an accountable care organization.

While the survey provides many interesting data points, the diversity of the responses affects its applicability. For example, the data would not accurately inform a hospital that the leading EMR/EHR suppliers are Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, McKesson and GE in that order although the 2014 surveyed data seems to indicate so.  34% of respondents were hospitals or hospital groups, 19% were physician practice groups, 22% were IDN’s, 5% community health centers and 20% were classified as other providers. Some of the interesting data points include:

•  37% say their organizations are implementing or planning to implement Epic electronic health records systems; 22% choose Cerner.
• The IT projects that will be completed in the next two years:
  • EMR/EHR
  • CPOE
  • E-prescribing
  • Network Upgrade
  • Patient access to PHR
  • Patient Management System
  • Storage Upgrade
  • Revenue Cycle
  • PACS
  • Clinical DSS
  • Business Intelligence
  • Disease Management
  • Telemedicine
  • Note: the list did not change significantly between the 2013 and 2014 surveys.
• 52% say they are  planning to use their own data warehouse and analysts
• The leading Big Data vendors are:
  • 29% Oracle
  • 23% IBM
  • 06% Humedica
  • 05% Intersystems
  • 03% Pervasive