Hospitals, clinics, and private practitioners in EU member states with communist histories are ramping up investments in IT.

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According to recently released IDC data, total IT investments this year will rise a modest yet solid 4.2% in the five core countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia) and then jump to 6–7% per year thereafter.

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With servers and traditional PCs (desktops and notebooks) largely in place, healthcare providers are particularly interested in connecting departments internally. They also aim to connect hospitals and clinics to each other and to external resources, such as national databases and healthcare information services. This makes networking equipment the fastest growing area, and spending will soar by nearly 18% annually for the next few years.

"Tight budgets and a lack of central IT planning at both national and institutional levels mean a great majority of the hospitals in former communist countries of the EU are still behind the times in terms of IT development," says IDC Health Insights Senior Analyst for Central and Eastern Europe Nino Giguashvili. "That is one reason we see such solid growth in spending, especially in networking. A well-designed and reliable network is needed for everything from basic storage and archiving solutions to records management solutions and clinical information systems, something that is also finally attracting attention."

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Healthcare is the fastest growing sector in the region in terms of IT spending.

Poland is the fastest growing healthcare IT market, rising by around 8.5% annually.

Romania and the Czech Republic are the next fastest expanding markets: Annually, healthcare IT spending is rising by around 5.5% and 5% in these countries, respectively.

IT services are invaluable to the sector and account for around 40% total IT spending, with more than half dedicated to the implementation of solutions.

In software, Clinical Information Systems are hot: Such investments are rising nearly 14% annually (though this is still a relatively small part of total spending).

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