EMR report: No leader, lots of contenders

No company has emerged as frontrunner in the EMR market, but there is a lead pack, according to a report from Kalorama Information, which valued the EMR market at $15.7 billion in 2010.

The report, “EMR 2011: The Market for Electronic Medical Record Systems,” said that revenue comes from a wide variety of vendors including hospital IT vendors and small web-based companies' offerings, the New York City-based healthcare market research firm stated.

Among the primary market participants cited are established hospital IT giants such as Cerner, GE Healthcare, McKesson and Siemens Healthcare, Kalorama reported. Allscripts, which completed a merger with Eclipsys in 2010, is expected to hold a significant share of the ambulatory market this year, while vendors such as NextGen, athenahealth, and Amazing Charts are named in physician surveys, Kalorama stated.

In addition, physicians apparently have no clear favorite EMR yet, and physicians are willing to try products advertised on the internet, according to the report.

Kalorama's findings are based on analyses of recent American College of Physicians and American Academy of Family Physicians surveys, the company said.