IT spending up, but with caution

Health Management Technology, Oct, 2004

Look for CIOs and IT departments in multiple verticals to spend more on upgrading their infrastructures and replacing aging hardware, according to recent research by Forrester Research. The company predicts that one in four U.S. business PCs will be upgraded or replaced entirely during the next year, and says that 90 percent of large enterprises and 95 percent of smaller businesses will fork over the funds for upgrades, manifesting a strong back-to-basics trend within IT departments. Forrester Senior Analyst Nicholas Wilkoff says many organizations made sizable IT purchases to shore up for Y2K and are now needing to replace those aging systems. Across all verticals, the Forrester study predicts many replacement PCs will be portables, suggesting that 20 percent of new utility and telecommunication firms will support laptops.

Closer to the healthcare landscape, Forrester also predicts a mini-explosion in wireless technology by 2015, with a wider range--and use of--wearable badges and communication devices. Also, high-bandwidth mobile data services are gaining ground, especially in large urban areas, Forrester predicts. Higher bandwidth makes it easier and more affordable for hospitals to implement data-rich applications, such as monitoring and transmitting patient vital signs. By the end of next year, several forms of high-bandwidth mobile services will be available in most of the nation's top 100 metro areas. Within the next five years, mobile messaging will "explode," according to Forrester. By 2009, some 126 billion messages will be sent, many of them among patients and their caregivers.