When you buy typical software, you usually have a narrow
range of software companies to choose from. Office software
tends to come in a limited range of choices.
Perhaps there are only one or two primary providers of the
kind of software you need. This makes it relatively easy to
make the choices you need to make. Sometimes, if you have
questions or concerns, all you have to do is check online
forums for ratings on an individual product. You can also just
ask questions about the feature.
Over the years software companies have come and gone. A
prime example is WordPerfect Corporation. Once the dominant
word processing software company, WordPerfect slipped into
oblivion while the software itself went through several other
owners and is still a major contender in the field of office
suites.
However, when it comes to healthcare software companies, the
field is very broad. For once thing, there is a wide variety of
healthcare software programs available but the demand is much
narrower than it would be for an office suite or a video
game.
In the Software 500 list for 2003, the healthcare software
and services segment showed growth. At that time the largest
healthcare software company was Cerner and it showed a growth
of 40 percent over the previous year. For Cerner, that meant
that they did $617 million in software and services revenue
that year.
In the most recent listing (2006) for the Software 500 list,
there were 12 healthcare software companies (including Cerner).
In 2003, there were only 8 in the top 500 software
companies.
These are the big companies. Typically they provide software
management programs that allow medical practitioners to kept
records, make claims, track patients, and analyze patterns.
There are also targeted healthcare software companies that
focus on specialty practices and health issues such as
diabetes, renal failure, liver disease, various forms of
cancer, and bowel disease.
What makes healthcare software companies different is that
there are many combinations of healthcare issues and concerns
throughout the world. They have to be aware of the needs of the
bigger healthcare institutions as well as having to be aware of
the different healthcare systems around the world.
Healthcare software that focuses on a specific health issue
can focus just on diabetes, for example, but a healthcare
software company that focuses on the provider has to be aware
of the laws of the country and changes in legal requirements
such as the privacy issues relating to individual
healthcare.