The health IT market is in a transition period, from extremely data-centric systems toward more customizable workflow-centric systems. By “data-centric” I mean essentially structured databases plus graphical user interfaces. Users still have to figure out what to do next, hunt around to find the relevant data, and then further navigate around in order to enter data and orders. By “workflow-centric” I mean systems proactively pulling and pushing data and tasks to users, according to customizable templates and workflow models. This is a nascent trend. But it is growing quickly.
Investors view this trend as a way to unlock the value of the tremendous amount of data contained within tens of billions of dollars of recently installed hospital and ambulatory clinical information systems. This trend favors modular solutions, since the workflow technology can be used to “glue” modular functionality together.
