The Hospital IT Network
A platform for vendors and buyers
The Hospital IT Network, an online platform for vendors and buyers of hospital IT products and services, is progressing in its aim to create more transparency in the hospital IT market. The platform provides a European Vendor Directory showing company profiles, up-to-date market data and daily e-health news. It thus provides a unique tool for hospital IT vendors and buyers, such as CEOs and IT managers.
EH@MEDICA asked David Blazek, the network’s Client Relationship Manager, why the platform was created, when there are already many networks, platforms and communities for e-health issues.
‘We are not another platform – Hospital-IT.net is a unique business tool that supports important decision making processes such as purchase, sales, marketing and communications,’ he explained. ‘We provide a European Vendor Directory containing almost 2,000 company profiles and a repository with about 250 objective e-health market information reports. We also provide a daily news service.
‘The Hospital IT Network supports marketing, PR and business development decisions. Through ongoing e-health market research and structured demand analysis we were able to create a custom-designed online platform for the hospital IT market, which is now available in five different languages.’
The platform was officially launched six months ago at conhIT. Today, representatives of the Hospital IT Network are at Medica, a presence not just to promote the platform, he pointed out: ‘Besides our promotional activity we want to thank our clients for their trust in our concept over the last six months. Each active platform member gets one free Market Report with information on the current and future deployment of healthcare IT solutions in European hospitals. Furthermore we have many appointments concerning exciting collaboration ideas to advance Hospital-IT.net further
‘Since the launch, we concentrated on two areas: vendor listing and IT managers. So far we have contacted about 2,000 vendors of hospital IT solutions in 12 European countries, which are listed in our Vendor Directory. Right now we are in the process of contacting 8,000 hospital IT managers of general and acute hospitals in Europe. This approach will guarantee that we generate the community and market place to share information and knowledge to support decision making processes. Our three pillars are the Vendor Directory, the Market Place and the Hospital IT Community; these are up and running and are actively used by our members. Every day about 200 visitors use our Hospital-IT.net and that’s just the beginning.
‘By the end of this year we will have completed our second phase, contacting all European hospital IT managers, and we’ll then start the statistical analyses of the eHospital Census 2009 data. The report will be published early 2010.
‘There are plenty of new features planned: With a Vendor Rating functionality we enable hospital IT vendors to benchmark their current solutions and support them in their purchase decisions. We are also going to launch a Tenders and RFPs section, with web applications and evaluation tools supporting the tendering process.
‘As you can see The Hospital IT Network keeps on moving for more transparency in the hospital IT market.’
Details: www.hospital-it.net
19.11.2009
