Enterprise medical image viewers are the hot trend in imaging and will be a core component in the medical imaging informatics ecosystem, a research report predicts.
The viewers are coming into vogue even as the picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) market has saturated in the last few years. Currently, the enterprise medical image viewers are reaching niche audiences but San Antonio, Texas-based research firm, Frost & Sullivan says their market reach is expanding rapidly. The market earned $44.8 million in revenue in 2013. By 2017, Frost & Sullivan says it will be at $63.9 million. This will come from provider facilities of all kinds--large multi-hospital health systems and individual community hospitals.
"U.S. enterprise viewer vendors must extend their product positioning beyond the niche, point-to-point function of clinical image review to address new, broader use cases," Frost & Sullivan analyst and imaging expert Nadim Michel Daher said in a statement. "Primary study interpretation, imaging specialist collaboration, consolidated specialty image viewers and even patient access to images are some use cases still largely underserved in the market today."
Researchers specifically say that a federated access access to enterprise-wide images, including diagnostic-grade image manipulation and interpretation functionalities being incorporated in the new-generation viewers, will be the driving factors in the growth of enterprise viewers in the imaging IT ecosystem. Also integral to this growth integration of viewers with electronic medical record (EMR) system and the development of hybrid cloud software products.
