The PACS market will enjoy double-digit growth over the next half decade, as governments encourage providers to digitize images and the technology attracts specialists outside radiology, according to a teaser for a new market report.

The sector, valued at about $2.8 billion in 2010, should grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent, reaching $5.4 billion in 2017, according to market research outfit GlobalData.

The report, "Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) - Global Opportunity Assessment, Competitive Landscape and Market Forecasts to 2017," was announced Wednesday.

Three growth drivers

According to the teaser, the research firm's analysts see three primary drivers for the image storing and sharing tech. One is demographic. Governments are facing expanding, and aging, populations, and are encouraging providers to digitize information as a way to make health care delivery more efficient, and possibly cheaper. The U.S., Europe, China and India have all created incentive programs to prod their providers into the digital age. "These incentives have been instrumental in accelerating the adoption of PACS," the firm said in the release.

The other driver is technological. The move by PACS vendors to offer "cloud" services, where images are stored on offsite servers and accessed via a Web browser, is helping drum up demand, GlobalData said. Largely, this is because these PACS can be offered as a software-as-a-service model -- where providers pay as they go -- thereby eliminating large upfront hardware costs and making the systems accessible to smaller, private practices, the group said.

Lastly, new tools are widening the appeal of PACS outside radiology, making it a "crucial decision support system" for oncology, cardiology and pathology, GlobalData said.

Similar reports

Of course, the current report comes almost a year after a similarly themed one from another market research firm that found the U.S. government's meaningful use incentives would actually eat into PACS and RIS spending until 2013, as hospital IT budgets shift towards electronic health records.

That said, just last month KLAS came out with a report on PACS, saying that a wave of replacements from bigger hospitals and health systems should shake up an otherwise slowed market.

PACS facts

Whatever the case, the GlobalData teaser also turned up some interesting PACS facts. The U.S. is the biggest market, apparently, taking a 51 percent slice out of the $2.8 billion pie, followed by Japan, with a 24 percent slice.

On the vendor side, GE Healthcare is the "leading player," with 16 percent market share. Right behind is Philips Healthcare, with 14 percent market share, and Fujifilm Medical Systems, also with a 14 percent cut. The other top companies are Agfa Healthcare, with 10 percent market share, McKesson Corp., with 8 percent, and Siemens Healthcare, with 7 percent, GlobalData said.

"Fujifilm and Fujitsu are most active in Japan, while Agfa and Siemens have market leadership in Europe," the group said. "McKesson, on the other hand, has a strong presence in the U.S. PACS market."

Watch your mailbox in the coming weeks for the February issue of DOTmed Business News, which features a lead story on the PACS market. In the meantime, read which PACS was named Best in KLAS last year.

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