According to a recent market research report by Technavio, the global medical transcription IT spending market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 6% over 2016-2020. The report says that the need for a digital healthcare system will drive the demand for IT-empowered medical transcription services during the forecast period.
The report presents the market outlook and growth prospects of the global medical transcription IT spending market in the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Overall market size is calculated based on revenue generated from transactions of medical transcription software, hardware and IT services.
Technavio’s report stresses that the need for a digital healthcare ecosystem is emerging as one of the primary drivers of this market’s growth.
In recent years, digital health solutions have significantly transformed the healthcare industry as well as the patient experience. An international survey by Mckinsey revealed that in many countries more than 75 percent of the respondents would like to enjoy digital healthcare services, provided the services meet their needs and provide the expected level of quality. Digital solutions enhance the way healthcare providers connect, understand, and engage with the patients, which in turn, would enhance the quality of care and result in better health outcomes.
Healthcare informatics technologies used in hospitals and super specialty clinics include EHR and RIS integrated with medical transcription IT solutions. The Technavio report says that these strategies help in two ways:
- reduce medical documentation timelines
- allow providers to invest greater efforts in diagnostic procedures
The main findings of the report are as follows:
- The Americas is the largest medical transcription IT spending market with a share of 52% in 2015.
- In the Americas, the need for organized patient records due to new medical documentation standards is driving market growth. Healthcare facilities in the Americas have transitioned to the ICD-10 coding system which has more diagnosis codes than ICD-9. Physicians and medical transcriptionists now need to include detailed patient information, such as the clinical condition, the cause, treatment methods, and frequency of clinical visits. This has paved the way for IT-integrated medical transcription in the US.
- The US is a leading market for medical transcription services due to the greater focus on healthcare IT infrastructure improvements and reliable healthcare data models.
- Healthcare providers in the US are focused on getting efficient and accurate medical transcription solutions. Advances in technology, such as speech recognition platforms and medical health applications help minimize errors and optimize working processes. Vendors are developing innovative platforms to enhance the confidentialty and security of personal health information (PHI).
A lead analyst at Technavio for research on IT professional services summed up the findings: “Connected and integrated healthcare technology generates an enormous amount of information that can be processed by efficient IT solutions. The integration of medical transcription with healthcare informatics software solutions such as EHR requires additional IT investments. This IT trend will attract numerous start-up vendors and medical outsourcing solutions providers in the medical transcription market in the coming years.”
