Best-of-breed oncology vendors maintain market prowess

Best-of-breed oncology vendors persist in holding their own against enterprise vendors as the main competitors in the market, according to a report from market research firm KLAS.

Entitled Oncology 2013: Eyes Wide Open, the report suggests that while enterprise vendors like Cerner and Epic are making an impact in medical oncology, best-of-breed vendors such as Elekta and Varian continually deliver the necessary and desired functionality that providers want, as well as the full oncology IT suite. McKesson has also become a best-of-breed vendor to watch since their purchase of U.S. Oncology and iKnoMed solution, according to the executive summary of the report.

The KLAS report interviewed 176 providers regarding BMSi, Cerner, Elekta, Epic, IntrinisQ, McKesson, and Varian.

Though Varian is the radiation oncology market share leader, Elekta was found to outperform it in all areas except for workflow automation.

Epic and Cerner lack clinical functionality and Varian and Elekta fall behind in patient portal adoption. Of the interviewed providers, 67 percent reported that they attested for meaningful use and 51 percent of that population has started to use patient portals—a 21 percent increase from the previous year.

“The best-of-breed vendors have had to tighten up their interfacing capabilities to prove that they can compete with the enterprise vendors,” said report author Monique Rasband in a press release. “However with only 67% of providers in the study attesting for meaningful use, it is clear that there is a lot of room for growth and support from all oncology vendors.”