Healthcare Summit Preview: What's On Tap For 2009?

Health care appears to be the most resilient vertical market in tough times, although not even the most optimistic economic observers would deny these times are certainly tough. But with the incoming Obama Administration set to make health care a top priority, in combination with health-care's stability, that will mean new opportunities for solution providers.

As hundreds of health-care industry CIOs and top vendors in the vertical market prepare to gather this weekend in San Diego for Everything Channel's Healthcare Summit, solution providers are also looking to see what's on tap for health-care opportunities in the new year.

"The health-care community seems to be divided into a number of different thought processes right now," said C.J. Ezell, president of The ASI Group, a Mobile, Ala.-based health-care solution provider. "One group says the economy's in the tank so we need to spend no money at all. Then there's a whole other group of people who suggested the wrong party's just been elected because the Section 179 deductions we were used to having are, they fear, never going to come back, therefore we need to spend as much as we can now."

(Section 179 of the IRS Code, to which Ezell refers, allows a sole proprietor, partnership or corporation to fully expense tangible property in the year it's purchased.)

The credit crunch is similarly vexing, Ezell suggested.

"I had a conversation with a guy who said, 'I'd love to buy right now, but if I spend all my cash and in six months something big comes up for my practice, I won't be able to borrow any money," he explained. "For lots of people, that's the kind of thinking that's out there right now."

Ezell in 2004 converted The ASI Group from primarily a break-fix business to specializing entirely in health care, and he's since seen steady growth that's put The ASI Group on track to do about $1 million this year with net profits in the 30 percent range. Ezell has a particular focus on dental office clients, which he suggested represent one of the most untapped potential business opportunities for solution providers out there.

"I was a medic for eight years before I got into IT, so I understand the language," he said, referring to how solution providers who understand health-care terminology and the vertical's specific problems have a much easier time landing business than those who try to wing it. "When you can understand the language and talk to doctors on their level -- convey to them a sense of 'I understand' -- that instills such confidence in you from their standpoint. I mean, a LAN is a LAN is a LAN, but when you start talking about PCs in a health-care environment where you're doing patient charting, that's different."

Where else do successful health-care VARs focus their efforts? Anywhere a unified communications system can help, for one.

"One key initiative for us going forward is going to be to communicate the whole unified communications piece effectively," said Doug Chesler, president and CEO of Leverage Information Systems, a systems integrator based in Woodinville, Wash.

Leverage specializes in wireless network solutions, and the VAR has seen many a sales win in health-care environments, thanks to its ability to juggle multiple factors and come up with turnkey solutions. In order to solve communication problems among staff members at Skagit Valley Hospital in Mount Vernon, Wash., for example, Leverage combined a Cisco network with the Dukane ProCare 600 health-care communication system, the Emergin Gateway, and Vocera's instant voice communication system, the Badge.

On top of spot trends, electronic medical records (EMR) remain general health-care IT's biggest buzzword. According to market research house International Data Corp., the EMR market is growing at a rate of 15 percent a year, and is expected to reach $4.85 billion by 2015.

"EMR is all the focus, especially since there are incentives the government has put in place [for adoption]," Ezell said. "If you're [solution providers] not into EMR, within the next two to three years, you're really going to be too late. Take the plunge and get into it."

Follow the action from Everything Channel's Healthcare Summit in San Diego on ChannelWeb, starting Sunday and continuing through Wednesday morning.