Health IT vendors are tearing it up. It’s the latest growth area, according to a new report by Mercom Capital. Mercom says the booming industry has logged its first $1 billion quarter in venture capital (VC) funding and is “smashing totals from the entirety of 2013.”

According to EHRIntelligence “population health management, clinical analytics, mHealth, and practice management companies were among the most popular with investors, who see ample opportunity for health IT products to supplement EHRs, improve patient outcomes, and address operational gaps in struggling healthcare organizations.”

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Now that the HITECH Act of 2009 has been in place for a few years, researchers are able to gauge its impact from a variety of different perspectives.

The main focus is adoption and performance, but there a many trends that can be measured since the Act was put in place. The primary emphasis of most research is what the full reach and capabilities of health IT are, things such as whether or not health IT increases efficiency, patient safety, and if it offers the quality that practices both large and small can benefit from when measuring from an organizational, environmental and financial standpoint.

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As mHealthWatch reported in October, the latest industry projections call for a 100% increase in venture capital funding for health IT this year.

Some 150 deals in the third quarter of this year alone accounted for $737 million raised in VC funding. The dollar amount of disclosed deals surpassed the second quarter total of $623 million.

It comes as no surprise that venture capital is front and center for the upcoming 2013 mHealth Summit.
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A new report from the California Healthcare Foundation indicates that the use of health information technology (HIT) has been growing within the state of California.

Driving this expansion is the proven ability of HIT tools to reduce errors and adverse clinical events, and to improve the quality and efficiency of patient care.

A corresponding inforgraphic, shared below, puts the aforementioned growth into perspective.

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In Atlanta, Georgia today, physicians at Emory University Hospital are finding success with health IT. It’s being used to gather intricate streams of health-related data procured from an array of critical care machines to gain a single-view impression of a patient’s real-time condition.

All told, it’s a fascinating and proven real-world example of how big data is lending to practical and actionable uses for doctors in critical care situations.

“If you were to ask me, ‘What’s been going on with this patient for the last minute? The last five minutes? The last 30 minutes?’ I couldn’t tell you. There’s so much data going by,” Dr. Tim Buchman, director of the Emory Center for Critical Care, tells the Associated Press.

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According to a new report from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the growing use of health information technology and mobile health applications may impact the future demand for physicians.

New research indicates that patients’ future use of physician services will change dramatically as electronic health records and consumer e-health apps proliferate.

“The results of our study are important because they provide a forward looking snapshot of how health IT will profoundly impact the American health care workforce over the next decade or two,” writes the study’s lead author Jonathan Weiner, DrPH.

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Mercom Capital Group is out with new projections that call for a 100% increase in venture capital funding for health IT this year.

Details contained in the new report indicate that some 150 deals in the third quarter of this year alone accounted for $737 million raised in VC funding.

The dollar amount of disclosed deals surpassed the second quarter total of $623 million.
Read the full story