A report by consulting firm ResearchFox has identified the main factors behind the ongoing growth of the global health care analytics market. As this blog reported recently, a forecast by IQ4I Research and Consultancy predicts that the market will reach $20.8 billion in the year 2020. ResearchFox agrees, anticipating a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22 percent over the next four years, when the market will go from the current $4.8 billion to more than $10 billion in 2018.
In the United States specifically, ResearchFox gives much of the credit for that anticipated growth to expanding federal mandates, which are leading to increased use of electronic health records (EHRs) and implementation of health information exchanges (HIEs). Experts also believe that growth will accelerate as the benefits of analytics become more noticeable. Primarily, quick and easy access to health information is already leading to improved patient diagnoses as physicians have a larger pool of data to study.
Other advantages include providing easy access to doctor performance evaluations and more effectively detecting health care fraud. For providers, health care analytics work in much the same way as business intelligence analytics, giving essential insights that will allow them to divert personnel and resources in order to improve their services and revenue.
Conversely, a few factors will prevent the market from growing even faster, most notably security concerns and a lack of analytics and IT expertise among current health care workers. Over time, as analytics usage becomes more prevalent, this situation will be resolved because organizations will put a greater focus on hiring employees who can efficiently manage analytics tools.