Missing Suspects and Market Segments

Siemens has not separated out its HIT revenue since its acquisition of Shared Medical Systems (SMS) in 2000. SMS had been the number one HIS vendor for many years during the '80s and '90s, and it has been sorely missed in the Top 100 list. Siemens corporate does not break out revenue by market segments like HIT, so we estimated the 2007 revenue based on past trends and probable sales since the company last reported.

GE is another large firm that does not break out revenue by market segments such as HIT, yet we know the company is a major player through its many acquisitions of HIS vendors that have reported in the past, such as IDX (CareCast) and Medicalogic (Logician). Again, we estimated GE's HIT revenue to place them where we think they best fit in the list. It is critical to give credit to this major player with hundreds of hospital clients.

Sunquest was recently spun-off from Misys and is another former major player in the LIS niche. The company's 2007 HIT revenues were reported in a business journal in its home state of Arizona, so we can again give the company its rightful place as a leading player in the ancillary systems market segment.

We are adding several sub-categories to the HCI 100 list to help readers evaluate players in primary industry niches:

HIS — “Hospital Information Systems,” the traditional moniker for vendors of administrative, financial and clinical systems that automate the entire array of hospital operations:

• Administrative systems: access (ADT and census), HIM (abstracting and coding), document imaging (scanning and retrieval), etc.

• Financial systems: patient accounting (billing, AR, etc.) and general accounting (AP, GL, materials, etc.).

• Clinical systems: orders and results, nursing documentation, EMR, CPOE and major ancillary departments.

Ancillary — vendors that specialize in systems for hospital ancillary departments such as laboratory, radiology, pharmacy, etc.

Consulting — vendors that provide assistance to hospitals in planning, selecting and implementing systems, as well as outsourcing all or part of hospital IT departments.

Practice Management — vendors that provide systems that automate physician practices, both clinical (ambulatory EMRs) and financial (1500 billing).