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Cranfield, UK, 13th June 2024 –
Co-authored with Amy Thompson.
Alongside a busy month of market news, May also brings with it the publication of Signify Research’s Imaging IT World Report – 2024, please message me or reach out to me at jake.bennett@signifyresearch.net if you’re interested in a top-level briefing of the team’s key takeaways from the report. June also brings with it the SIIM 2024 Annual Meeting in Maryland, USA, where our Research Manager Amy Thompson will attend. If you would like to book a meeting with her, please follow this link.
Second Funding Win For Structured Reporting
Following on from Smart Reporting’s €23 million Series C funding round announced in April, fellow best-of-breed reporting vendor Rad AI announced a similarly impressive Series B funding round of $50 million. This brings the vendor’s total raised funds to over $80 million. This reinforces our previous prediction that 2024 would be the “year for structured reporting”. Both vendors have expressed desires to expand their commercial base, and with sights firmly set on the US, current reporting market leader, Microsoft’s Nuance, will be looking on with keen interest. We’ll continue to witness partnerships blossom between reporting specialists and imaging IT vendors, as they look to capitalise on provider’s desperate need for increased productivity in their radiology and other imaging departments.
Cybersecurity Remains In The Spotlight
Cyber-attacks are feared by hospital CIOs globally, with May seeing another high-profile ransomware attack in the US, against healthcare provider, Ascension. This follows a similar attack on Optum in February, whose effects are still being felt now. Healthcare is one of the most targeted industries for cyberattacks, with 809 data breaches in the US healthcare industry from 2020 to 2023, according to a study from SOAX. As a result, security has increased in importance for providers evaluating imaging IT vendors, with due diligence during the RFP process becoming more extensive. This trend has increased the number of partnerships between imaging IT vendors and cybersecurity specialists, but also drove providers more aggressively to consider public cloud deployment.
AI Partnerships Continue
May saw two new partnerships between imaging IT vendors and AI vendors, as the hype around AI sustains provider demand and interest. Firstly, Philips and AI platform vendor, CARPL.ai inked an agreement that will see the two vendors collaborate in Brazil and integrate the CARPL.ai platform into Philips’ enterprise imaging solution, Vue PACS. Secondly, Soliton IT, a UK and Australia based radiology IT vendor, joined forces with Annalise.ai. The two vendors will integrate Annalise’s Enterprise solutions into Soliton’s Radiology+, Share+, RIS and image exchange solutions, hoping to improve efficiency in Soliton’s customer network. These announcements are just two examples of a continued trend of the integration of AI into imaging IT platforms, a necessity as provider continue to demand a convergence between the ecosystems with deeper integrations and drives towards efficiency.
Cardiology Partnerships
New partnerships from May weren’t limited to just AI, cardiology IT also got its fair share of announcements. GE HealthCare announced a collaboration with Medis Medical, to integrate the latter’s Medis Quantitative Flow Ratio (QFR) into the former’s interventional cardiology platform. Circle Cardiovascular Imaging and AI-driven, heart digital twin vendor inHEART have signed a distribution agreement. As part of the agreement, inHEART will utilise Circle CVI’s global marketing and distribution to drive the international expansion of its pre-operative planning tool.
Both partnerships are examples of large market players, in the respective fields, leveraging niche tools to enhance and complement their larger portfolios. As competition heats up, and market dynamics evolve in cardiology, it will be important for vendors to invest and innovate to protect its installed base.
Leveraging The Patient
PocketHealth have announced the launch of a free-to-patient plan of its app called PocketHealth Basic. Patients can download and access their diagnostic images and reports, avoiding either delays, out-of-pocket costs or both for accessing their records via traditional avenues. PocketHealth is hoping to leverage increased patient engagement with the app, to then promote adoption by providers. It hopes to leverage the ongoing trend of patient empowerment to change the conversation around image exchange by putting the patient at the centre of it. Although an alternative strategy to its competitors, targeting individuals to drive adoption may prove to be slow and gradual, but will the tortoise outpace the hare in this instance?
If you have any questions about the announcements discussed here, or have any research requirements for the wider Imaging IT market, I’d be more than happy to have a conversation. Please feel free to message me on LinkedIn, reach out via email at jake.bennett@signifyresearch.net. Please subscribe to the Imaging IT Monthly News Round-Up newsletter to stay up to date with all the latest developments and hear our thoughts and insight.
Related Research
Signify Research’s imaging IT service provides expert market intelligence and detailed insights across radiology IT, cardiology IT, and advanced visualisation IT, alongside operational workflow & business intelligence tools. Combining primary data collection and in-depth discussions with industry stakeholders, our thorough research approach yields credible quantitative and qualitative analysis, helping our customers make critical business decisions with confidence. Throughout the course of 2024, the imaging IT team will be further assessing developments in the market through its’ Imaging IT Market Intelligence Service.
About The Author
Jake is the Senior Market Analyst on the Imaging IT team and joined Signify Research in late 2023, after over half a decade in the medical devices and healthcare market research industries.
About Signify Research
Signify Research provides healthtech market intelligence powered by data that you can trust. We blend insights collected from in-depth interviews with technology vendors and healthcare professionals with sales data reported to us by leading vendors to provide a complete and balanced view of the market trends. Our coverage areas are Medical Imaging, Clinical Care, Digital Health, Diagnostic and Lifesciences and Healthcare IT.
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