Healthcare providers in the Middle East and Africa will spend US $4.4 billion on IT products and services in 2013, according to research by Gartner.
This is a forecasted increase of 3.8 per cent from the reported 2012 revenue, which was US$4.3 billion.
Anurag Gupta, research director at Gartner, said: “Development in the healthcare sector is a major priority to increase medical tourism, respond to life styles diseases, encourage disease prevention and position the Middle East at the leading edge of medical development.
“Growing private healthcare infrastructure, accreditations to internationally recognised agencies and government investments will drive higher adoption of technology.”
The largest expected spending category for healthcare providers is expected to be telecommunications. This category includes telecommunications and networking equipment and services.
The spending will be led mainly by growth in mobile devices and enterprise communication equipment, according to Gartner.
A forecasted growth of 5.9 per cent, highest growth rate for a category, is expected from spending on “internal services”.
According to Gartner: “Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organization. The information services staff includes all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems.
“IT services will achieve the next highest growth rate amongst the spending categories – forecast to grow 4.3 per cent in 2013 to reach US$455 million in 2013, up from US$436 million in 2012 led by growth in software support and IT management.”
Further information on healthcare providers sector IT spending is available in the Gartner report Forecast: Enterprise IT Spending for the Healthcare Providers Market, Worldwide, 2010-2016, 4Q12 Update.
