Provider CIO and IT Executive Views on the Healthcare Information Technology Market in Brazil

Adoption of healthcare information technology (IT) in Brazil has been increasing at a moderate pace, with good possibilities ahead as the country moves to more solid economic ground. Brazil presents great opportunities for growth in the near future, based on four major pillars:
•     Huge healthcare infrastructure
•     Potential gross domestic product growth
•     The acceleration of digital transformation initiatives in several industries
•     Initiatives that support healthcare IT management tools, with important regulations on the public side and market forces pressuring the private providers

Although there is still a great inequity between public and private healthcare expenditure, Brazil's healthcare expenditure per capita is high among Latin American and other emerging countries, although it remains far behind Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries or US standards.

Frost & Sullivan developed this study in conjunction with the Brazilian Healthcare CIOs Association (ABCIS) to map out the penetration of administrative and clinical IT systems, and determine their primary roles in Brazilian hospitals. 

A Web-based targeted chief information officers (CIOs) and executive IT management. Survey responses were de-identified, analyzed, and triangulated to deliver actionable insights.

The survey results allow Frost & Sullivan to outline a broad understanding of the digital health scenario in Brazil related to its maturity level, adoption perspectives, and key market trends. Priorities include enterprise content management (ECM), clinical decision support systems (CDSS), and telemedicine. Healthcare IT tools aside from electronic medical records (EMRs) include solutions for interoperability, hospital information systems (HIS), Picture archiving communication and radiology information systems (PACS/RIS), and business intelligence (BI) analytics. Typically, CIOs and chief technology officers are the key decision makers for IT strategies, followed by hospital chief executive officers in hospitals.