Study: Healthcare IT spending growing, despite broader IT slowdown

While global IT spending is expected to contract through next year, the healthcare IT sector should grow, according to new data from research firm Datamonitor. IT budgets should shrink in 2009, partially because of the down economy, but also due to increasingly cautious budget moves by IT administrators over the past few years.

For the fourth consecutive year, the number of enterprises planning to substantially increase IT budgets has fallen. More than 50 percent of respondents saying they're keeping their budget at the same level in 2009 as in 2008. Meanwhile, 37 percent of respondents said they expected to see their IT budgets grow in 2009, while 13 percent expect budget cuts.

Researchers noted that the proportion of enterprises planning to grow their IT budget by 6 percent or more has fallen from 20 percent in 2006 to less than 10 percent in 2009, a particularly big drop compared with past changes.

To learn more about this study:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece [1]

Related Articles:
Federal spending on health IT to shoot up [2]
S&P to monitor non-profit hospital IT spending [3]