A common practice among analyst firms such as Chilmark Research is to make annual predictions of what is in store for the coming year. Chilmark will be making its own predictions for 2010 in the next couple of weeks. Unfortunately, what most analyst firms do not do is reflect on their previous predictions and assess where they hit the mark, where they completely missed it and those partial hits. Chilmark differs here in that we actually find it quite instructive to perform such an assessment for it both gives us some satisfaction when we get it right, but more importantly, provides us some humility and lessons when we get it wrong.
Following is our humble assessment of our 2009 Top Trends & Forecast post which was published in late December 2008:
Healthcare not Immune to Economic Woes: HIT – Indeed, 2009 has not been kind to the overall economy with unemployment rates still hovering in the 10% range. Though healthcare is one of the few sectors that is actually hiring, truly a bright spot in this economy, certain sectors of healthcare have been anemic, especially HIT as physicians and hospitals await the final definition of meaningful use before plunging in and adopting a certified EHR, whatever that is. As per our forecast, the market for Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) apps remained robust in 2009 and HIE apps did fairly well.
Health 2.0 Companies Shrivel on the Vine: MIXED – In retrospect, not a very insightful forecast as the cost to create and maintain a Health 2.0 company are not that significant, thus it may take sometime for founders to call it quits and close up shop. And as many close their doors, there are plenty of others inspired to create some form of Health 2.0 app that will appeal to the masses, or at least a large sub-group (think diabetes, weight-loss, etc.) coming in to take the place of those before them. We still hold to our basic premise that those who will succeed long-term will be characterized by: strong competitive differentiation, a revenue model that is not solely dependent on advertising, and a clear and compelling go-to-market strategy with a clear value proposition and partner network.
Retail Health Clinics Gain Traction, Corporate Clinics Stall: MIXED – Rather than turning to retail clinics in these times of uncertainty consumers continue to turn to those they trust, their primary care physician. Despite the flu season and the ability to get your flu shot virtually anywhere, including the airport, retail clinics actually saw some contraction with one of the leaders, CVS’s MinuteClinic actually rationalizing the number of clinics it owns. CVS’s claims that this was in response to an initial over-build, but more likely is a result of tepid demand. Walgreens, CVS’s main competitor is the leader in providing on-site corporate clinics. Despite their strong presence in the corporate clinic market, they have been noticeably quiet in recent presentations and quarterly reports saying little if anything about their success in this market.
Virtual Visits a Mixed Bag: HIT – American Well certainly appears to lead the pack for virtual visits (they seem to show-up at every event out there and the press is having a lovefest with them) and are the consummate marketers of virtual visits, but despite this, Chilmark still does not see a vast and growing market for such services, yet. Virtual visits will indeed grow at a fairly rapid clip as physicians look for new ways to further engage their existing patients/customers, where a level of trust has been established. The market growth for ad-hoc virtual visits, such as American Well, MDliveCare, etc., will continue to be modest at best until consumers become more familiar and comfortable with this approach to delivering care.
Dossia Ramps-up: MISS – Though predicting that Dossia would ramp-up its services with more go-lives of consortium members, such was not the case. While Dossia has done a lot of work in 2009 and claims that this work was necessary prior to others beyond Wal-Mart going live on the platform, Chilmark thought that at least by now, employers such as Intel, Pitney-Bowes and other advocates for the Dossia platform would be introducing their employees to Dossia during their annual benefits fairs in the fall. To date, we have seen nothing more from Dossia and it continues to remain an enigma in the Personal Health Cloud market.
Chicken and Egg Scenario Plays-out for GHealth and HealthVault: MIXED – Google did add support in Google Health for unstructured data (ability for users to add advanced directives), but beyond that no further strides to support other standards outside the still limited bastardized version of the CCR standard currently in use. Chilmark also thought that Google would become more aggressive in attracting other data providers and partners, but this has fallen far short of expectations. Predictions for HealthVault were much more on target with its efforts to go international (Telus-Canada), the coupling of Amalga and HealthVault together (New York Presbyterian & Caritas Christi), the addition of many more partners and most recently, the roll-out of the consumer health widgets on MSN.
New HIE Models Leveraging Cloud Computing and SaaS Gain Traction: HIT – In the last few months, leading HIE vendors Axolotl, Covisint and Medicity have each announced their own Platform as a Service (PaaS) model, a combination of cloud computing and SaaS. Clearly, these leading vendors see the writing on the wall: HIEs will be pivotal solutions in the future roll-out of HIT supported by ARRA stimulus funding. Now the question is: How will traditional EHR vendors respond?
Continua Compliant Devices Hit the Market with Little Impact to Anemic Telehealth Growth: HIT – Despite the hoopla regarding Continua and its certified devices (there are five today and one adapter) that were to storm the market, the use of biometric devices by consumers to facilitate telehealth remains by and large in the testing phase. There has been no broad roll-out, and very little in the way of ARRA funding is targeting this area despite the pleas of some.
Dreams of Big Fed Spending on HIT Do Not Materialize: MISS – Complete and total miss now that the feds plan to spend some $44B on HIT in the coming years to wire up physicians, hospitals and clinics. Couldn’t get any farther from what has actually come to pass in this forecast, but it remains to be seen just how successful this federal largess will be in the successful deployment and implementation of HIT. A very tight schedule with a number of hurdles to overcome – keep your fingers crossed that not too much of tax payer dollars will ultimately be wasted.
mHealth Continues Expansion, Most Apps Lame: HIT – mHealth is seeing increasing attention with an increasingly large array of apps being made available, from simple text messaging apps from the like of FrontlineSMS targeted for NGOs in developing countries to increasingly complex, useful and expensive apps such as the $189.00 app, Proloquo2Go, which was a top iTunes seller in 2009.
Adding it all up, Chilmark Research did a reasonable job of forecasting 2009, with five hits, 3 mixed and 2 total misses. Hope you’ll forgive the blunder/complete miss on the HITECH Act and we’ll strive for a more accurate forecast for 2010, which will be forthcoming within the next couple of weeks.
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