The high cost of digital pathology systems has led to a noticeable shift from traditional on-premises solutions to hosted technology.This shift is causing a spike in growth for hosted solutions, which are expected to post a whopping CAGR of 41.4 percent for the 2013-2018 period.
Compare this growth rate to that of on-premises solutions, which is only expected to post a CAGR of 8.21 percent from 2013-2018, and you can see just how many healthcare organizations are opting for hosted digital pathology solutions.
High Cost of Digital Pathology Systems
Despite the benefits of digital pathology systems such as easy and fast access to patient data, the growth of the Global Digital Pathology Market may be affected because of the high implementation costs. The cost of the whole slide image system includes various costs associated with licensing, system design and customization, implementation, training, and maintenance.
After purchasing a system, organizations or hospitals need to hire experts for the proper implementation of the system. Moreover, the integration of these applications with the existing business functions such as LIS and EMR can be challenging. As a result of such factors, many healthcare laboratories are not willing to incur the high initial cost necessary for the implementation of these applications.
Increased Usage of Hosted Technology
The emergence of hosted solutions has enabled healthcare organizations to increase their efficiency and reduce the cost of deploying valuable IT infrastructure. Soon after disease diagnosis, results are stored in databases, and these databases are then stored in a cloud. The information stored in the databases can be used at later stages to further refine treatments for other patients.
Hosted technology enables healthcare providers and patients to access this information at any time and from any location. Although healthcare providers have a good understanding of the benefits of hosted data analytics solutions, a number of concerns and risks, particularly regarding data sharing and security, are affecting the steady adoption of such solutions.
Overall, however, hosted technology is expected to have a significant positive impact on the Global Digital Pathology market during the forecast period.
Reducing IT Infrastructure Costs with Hosted Solutions
Nowadays, hospitals do not want to invest in managing their IT infrastructure and business environment. Vendors are offering pathology solutions on cloud, which helps end-users to avoid the need to invest in hardware and software by switching to the cloud model. In addition, all upgrades and data security are managed by the digital pathology system vendors.
Also, the vendors can either host a separate system for each hospital or host the same system for multiple hospitals on a single platform. It is very easy to deploy a single-tenant model; however, very few vendors have the capability to host systems based on the multi-tenant model.
Hosted offerings have become popular because they reduce the upfront cost and the upgrading and maintenance costs that are incurred with on-premises technology. Many companies worldwide have realized the value of the hosted deployment model through the cloud and are adopting hosted solutions because of the low cost and shared services model.
Market Attractiveness of Delivery Platforms
In terms of delivery platform, on-premises is expected to experience the most market traction during the forecast period. One of the major reasons for this is the high level of security and control over the information obtained by this technology. Also, the growing awareness of the need for better control over the business process (tracking patient data) has increased the demand for on-premises solutions.
The hosted delivery platform is expected to experience a higher growth rate in comparison to on-premises. The reduction in cost with the use of hosted services is the reason behind this. In a hosted delivery platform, pathologists can put the patient information with the diagnosis on the cloud from where the hospital and doctor concerned can take the record and use it to enable better treatment of their patient.
