Magic Quadrant for Clinical Communication and Collaboration

Clinical Communication and Collaboration Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

Key features and pros and cons of top Clinical Communication and Collaboration products:

Epic - Leader

Pros:

Epic's CC&C platform is natively integrated with the Epic enterprise software suite (EpicCare Ambulatory or EpicCare Inpatient) rather than a stand-alone offering.
Epic's CC&C platform is a personalized omnichannel communication and collaboration platform that connects all interdisciplinary patient care team members to Epic's longitudinal health record. This includes nurses, physicians, care teams, patient flow teams, case managers, virtual care providers, patient billing specialists and schedulers, in the hospital and clinic.
Multiple communication channels, such as secure chat, video conferencing, voice over IP (VoIP), and SMS instant messaging, are natively integrated across 170-plus EpicCare clinical workflows.

Cons:

Epic's CC&C capabilities are not fungible, as its CC&C tools are tightly tethered to its EHR platforms.
Access to Epic's CC&C platform capabilities requires a healthcare provider organization to install Epic's EHR. However, Epic installations can extend the platform to external or affiliate providers who aren't live on Epic.
Significant advances in interoperability standards and enabling technologies have made purchasing a suite of products from a single vendor less critical.

Mobile Heartbeat - Leader

Pros:

Mobile Heartbeat's MH-CURE CC&C platform consolidates fragmented clinical applications. It eliminates legacy, purpose-built communication devices while providing dependable VoIP calling, secure texting, paging, one-to-many broadcasts for team mobilization and escalating critical notifications to team members.
MH-CURE supports robust and reliable interoperability with nurse call systems, medical alerting and alarm middleware, unified communication platforms, and various patient management, operational and clinical systems required to support care delivery.
Mobile Heartbeat's InterApp Launch Points solution creates a seamless, single sign-on workflow between MH-CURE and commonly used third-party, mission-critical apps and websites (e.g., AirStrip, TeleTracking, Doximity, UpToDate).

Cons:

Mobile Heartbeat's strategy is to focus on clinician-to-clinician communication and collaboration, and therefore, has limited family engagement (between provider and family or caregiver) capabilities.
The path from Mobile Heartbeat's original MH-CURE CC&C system to its new Banyan platform should be made clearer.
HCA Healthcare constitutes a significant portion of Mobile Heartbeat's client base.

Oracle Health - Leader

Pros:

CareAware Connect is one of the earliest developed and deployed CC&C platforms. It has evolved with real-time health system principles (smart, situationally aware, collaborative and real time). CareAware Connect platform uses real-time, operational intelligence to share patient information and orchestrate essential workflows within the context of the patient journey.
Oracle Health provides CareAware-Connect-related services, such as endpoint management, network services, equipment exchange and application support, to provide a comprehensive maintenance and support experience for the health system.
The platform has strong clinical workflow integration and orchestration capabilities. It supports a context-aware, patient-centered care team approach to facilitate forming and activating a patient's care team.

Cons:

CareAware Connect's point-of-care workflows are comprehensive, with bidirectional support for EHR documentation and nursing tasks. These CC&C capabilities can be extended to non-Millennium EHRs, but Cerner's CareAware iBus middleware must first be adopted.
CareAware client feedback indicated concerns about the timeliness and responsiveness of Oracle Health's troubleshooting and support capabilities.
Oracle's acquisition of Cerner closed in June of 2022. The overall impact of the Oracle acquisition on Cerner's installed base and product development is not well-understood at this point.

PerfectServe - Leader

Pros:

PerfectServe's CC&C platform is cloud-native and supports bring-your-own-device (BYOD) deployments so that technology hardware requirements can be minimal. The only applications required for PerfectServe to be an operational and functional communication tool are a modern operating system (desktop or mobile) and a modern web browser.
PerfectServe has brought optimized scheduling, patient and family communications, call center efficiency and an ambulatory answering service into a single offering that works inside and outside the hospital's walls.
From PerfectServe's Unite platform perspective, all communications are workflows, not just messages or phone calls. Dynamic Intelligent Routing uses patient and provider context to ensure the right message is delivered to the right provider at the right time.

Cons:

Vendor client feedback indicated concerns about PerfectServe's support for analytics and reporting CC&C use cases.
With most of PerfectServe's revenue in the Americas, prospective buyers must ensure that sales and support are available in their geographies.
Epic is a replacement threat for basic secure messaging, given its market footprint and the scope of its enterprise agreement. However, PerfectServe is used to replace and augment Epic's CC&C capabilities for more complex communication needs.

Stryker (Vocera) - Leader

Pros:

Stryker simplifies nursing and care team workflows, and improves communications with intelligent routing, prioritization and escalation of calls, texts, notifications and alarms.
Stryker's clinical communication and workflow solution helps to strengthen staff safety and reduce alarm fatigue, cognitive burden, and time-to-action and intervention.
Stryker enables hospital staff to communicate by voice or text using their device of choice: hands-free badge, smartphone, desk phone, laptop or workstation.

Cons:

Vocera's Smartbadge is a voice-driven, wearable device that enables hands-free communication with care team members. In March 2022, the company introduced a new Minibadge. A significant percentage of Stryker's CC&C installations are badge-only.
Epic is a replacement threat, given its market footprint, embedded CC&C capabilities and the scope of its enterprise agreement. However, Stryker's Vocera platform is used to augment Epic's secure messaging capabilities.
The overall impact of the Stryker acquisition on Vocera's installed base and product development is not well-understood at this point.

symplr - Leader

Pros:

symplr's CC&C platform is a single, cloud-native platform for all real-time communication modalities (secure text, voice, alerts).
symplr's CC&C platform supports complex role- and team-based communications using native scheduling functionality (e.g., code teams).
symplr's Community Link breaks down organizational silos by enabling seamless communication, and sharing of roles and scheduling information across different organizations using the symplr platform.

Cons:

symplr is, first and foremost, a healthcare workforce management platform that has evolved through acquisition and integration, and the Halo Health platform is part of a larger strategy.
Vendor client feedback indicated concerns about symplr's support for critical results use cases.
The overall impact of the symplr acquisition on Halo Health's installed base and product development is not well-understood.

TigerConnect - Leader

Pros:

TigerConnect's CC&C platform is cloud-native, scalable and highly reliable (vendor claims 99.995% uptime). It is a highly flexible role- and team-based communication and collaboration platform.
TigerConnect's automated physician scheduling engine can quickly create the provider's schedule with consideration for physician time-off requests, preferences, custom rules and holiday calendars.
Strong nurse call integration with its own Critical Alert nurse call system, third-party nurse call platforms, and a commitment to evolve its collaboration and workflow orchestration capabilities.

Cons:

With most of TigerConnect's revenue in the Americas, prospective buyers must ensure that sales and support are available in their geographies.
Epic is a replacement threat, given its market footprint, embedded CC&C capabilities and the scope of its enterprise agreement. However, TigerConnect is used to replace and augment Epic's CC&C capabilities.
While venture capital investment can accelerate product development and operations, its strong commitment to ROI could influence TigerConnect's product roadmap and release schedule.

Andor Health - Challenger

Pros:

Andor Health's Unified Command Center Dashboard, powered by ThinkAndor's virtual assistant, provides clinical and nursing staff visibility regarding a patient across all care venues, including outpatient, inpatient, virtual and remote monitoring experiences.
Andor Health's ThinkAndor, an AI-based virtual assistant bot framework, uses OpenAI/ChatGPT models with ambient data from several data sources. Those sources include electronic health records (EHRs), telemetry, biometric devices and others, to initiate alerts and notifications to care teams to prompt action and influence human behavior. It can curate clinical data and context to support collaborative decision making, automate multidisciplinary consults and initiate "next best actions" for patient care delivery.
Andor Health's Digital Front Door functionality provides patients a personalized virtual communication and collaboration experience. The ThinkAndor virtual assistant bot leverages AI-driven workflows to guide patients through collaborative experiences to reduce staff burden and overhead. These automated workflows allow for symptom checking and remote triage, virtual waiting room workflows for intake and consent, and automated care plan management using self-reported and biometric data.

Cons:

Andor Health is a privately held company with less than 100 employees. However, Microsoft has taken a minor position in the company (as an M12 portfolio company).
Compared to most of its competitors, Andor Health is a relative newcomer to the CC&C space (founded in 2018).
While Andor Health qualifies as a CC&C vendor, its solution capabilities and market messaging focus heavily on virtual care.

FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

A: Epic, Mobile Heartbeat, Oracle Health, PerfectServe, Stryker (Vocera), symplr, TigerConnect

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

A: Leaders are in the strongest position to influence the CC&C market's direction. They demonstrate a market-defining vision of how CC&C will evolve. Leaders can execute against that vision through their organization's capabilities, business model and platform. They have shown business results in the form of references and growth. They excel in their combination of market understanding, innovation, platform features and overall viability. While maintaining a well-established base of long-term customers, Leaders consistently win new deals and deliver successful implementations. Their customers are deployed in several geographic regions and are often the vendors that other vendors measure themselves against.

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

A: https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research

Report:

Top Vendor Products for Clinical Communication and Collaboration in 2023

Clinical Communication and Collaboration Vendor Product Comparisons 2023

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FAQs

Q: Which vendors are Leaders in 2023?

Q: What does "Leader" mean in MQ terms?

Q: How do I interpret a Gartner Magic Quadrant?

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