Trend Toward Regional and National Installations Will Cause Shifts in European PACS, RIS and CVIS Market Shares

BURLINGTON, Mass., Feb. 20, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Decision Resources Group finds that expansion of the European market for picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), radiology information systems (RIS) and cardiovascular information systems (CVIS) will be hindered by the debt crisis and radiology cuts in the region. The resulting budget constraints have led to deferred purchases of new and replacement PACS, RIS and CVIS for many countries in 2013, as well as the cancellation of a significant number of public tenders for these systems, particularly in the more severely affected markets in Italy and Spain.

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Although system sales will rebound as European economies recover, companies in the PACS, RIS and CVIS market will still need to pursue aggressive pricing strategies to remain competitive. In fact, intense competition for available contracts has resulted in vendors offering heavy discounts. These aggressive pricing tactics are necessary for PACS, RIS and CVIS vendors to be successful in tenders for regional and national installations.

"In Europe, the trend toward implementing connected imaging informatics networks across hospitals has encouraged a rise in region- and nationwide installations of PACS, RIS and CVIS," said Decision Resources Group Team Leader Mickel Phung. "For example, Spain is moving toward regional installations of systems in each of the country's seventeen autonomous regions. As of 2013, five of these regions have already converted to regional installations, and additional public regional tenders are expected through 2022 as the country recovers from the debt crisis. In Europe, the largest ongoing national project is in the United Kingdom, where multiyear contracts signed several years ago as part of the National Program for Information Technology (NPfIT) have begun to expire, prompting replacements of PACS, RIS and CVIS across the country."

These regional and national installations will cause major shifts in market shares because not all facilities will buy replacement systems from their previous suppliers. Furthermore, while multiple vendors may have serviced a number of different facilities in an area in the past, they will now be replaced with a single regional provider. Many smaller vendors that are unable to bid competitively for these large-scale projects will be pushed out of the market, resulting in market shares being increasingly consolidated among a shrinking pool of competitors.

Decision Resources Group's European Markets PACS, RIS, and CVIS 2014 report includes unit, installed base, average selling price and revenue information, along with market drivers and limiters and a competitive landscape for radiology PACS, RIS and CVIS/CPACS in Benelux, France, Germany, Italy, Nordic region, Spain and the United Kingdom.

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