Report:

Magic Quadrant for Clinical Communication and Collaboration

Top Vendor Products for Clinical Communication and Collaboration in 2024

• Epic
• MEDITECH
• Mobile Heartbeat
• Oracle Health
• PerfectServe
• QliqSOFT
• Stryker
• symplr
• TigerConnect

Clinical Communication and Collaboration Vendor Product Comparisons 2024

• Epic - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Interactive customer collaboration: Epic actively collaborates with customers to identify products and services by providing its customers opportunities to influence the design of the CC&C platform. This includes direct collaboration with Epic R&D staff, interaction with a designated Epic support team and participation in user group events.
  • Integrated product suite: Epic's pricing model is administratively simple and includes all communication and collaboration channels it currently offers, with the option to be licensed individually. Epic's CC&C products embed communication workflows into Epic's product suite (EpicCare Ambulatory, EpicCare Inpatient, MyChart, Cheers CRM, Healthy Planet, etc.).
  • Overall viability: Epic is a closely held company with approximately 5,000 employees dedicated to R&D activities. Along with no funded debt, its corporate equity continues to increase annually as its inpatient electronic health record (EHR) platform and market presence expands globally.

  Cons:

  • Limited platform access: Epic's CC&C products are tethered tightly to its EHR platform. In order to access Epic's CC&C capabilities, healthcare provider organizations must install Epic's EHR platform or be affiliated with a healthcare provider that is live on an Epic EHR platform.
  • Inflexible pricing: In 2023, Epic contracted 1,479 hospitals and 25,012 clinics for new or additional CC&C products. With this critical mass and EHR-related CC&C buying momentum, potential customers may find it challenging to negotiate with Epic on pricing or to lower the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Epic's CC&C products effectively.
  • Enterprise agreement required: Epic's EHR product footprint will continue to expand as will the adoption of its enterprise agreement. This will lead to decreased department-specific control and influence over the IT budget, application portfolio and strategic roadmap.


• MEDITECH - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Tested for utility and value: MEDITECH hosts executive advisory sessions, customer user panels and targeted focus groups, and performs end-user experience analysis. Before broader deployment, new solutions and features are tested at pilot sites to gain feedback on utility and value. MEDITECH also analyzes competitive wins and losses to assess the strength of its Expanse portfolio relative to buyer requirements.
  • Audience-specific platforms: MEDITECH's Expanse EHR platform includes CC&C products and capabilities such as Expanse Now (for physicians), Expanse Point of Care (for nurses), Expanse Patient Connect, and the Patient & Consumer Health Portal. Expanse Patient Connect enables communication around patient appointments and uses sentiment analysis and natural language understanding to route patient responses intelligently. MEDITECH's Patient & Consumer Health Portal allows patients and family members to access results, collaborate as a care team with portal messaging and initiate virtual visits.
  • Overall viability: MEDITECH is a privately held company with approximately 3,000 employees dedicated to product R&D and support activities. Its annual headcount is stable, and its customer retention rate is very high.

  Cons:

  • Restrictive platform access: MEDITECH's CC&C capabilities are not available to non-MEDITECH healthcare providers. They are tethered tightly to its EHR platform and workflows. To access them, healthcare provider organizations must install MEDITECH's Expanse EHR.
  • Limited transparency: MEDITECH is a privately held company that does not share its financial information publicly (and is often only available to prospective customers upon request). Private companies are not subject to SEC scrutiny, regulations, or reporting requirements, so additional effort is required to assess the company's financial viability.
  • Geographic strategy: While MEDITECH deploys its EHR platform outside of the U.S. and Canada, it has a limited number of non-North American installations, making up approximately 15% of total active implementations. While MEDITECH's global footprint appears to be growing with the introduction of its Expanse platform, its ability to localize its product suite to support different languages and geographies should be carefully assessed by prospective international clients.


• Mobile Heartbeat - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Open architecture: Mobile Heartbeat's platforms are based on an open architecture that supports enterprisewide CC&C at scale. Its solutions extend clinical collaboration beyond the EHR platform to support a wide range of clinical workflows. Its extensive reporting and analytics provide detailed usage feedback that enable efficiency improvements.
  • Interoperability: MH-CURE and Banyan support interoperability with nurse call systems, clinical alerts and alarms middleware, and unified communication platforms. It also provides the patient management, operational and clinical systems required to support care delivery.
  • Strong integrations: Mobile Heartbeat's platforms can integrate deeply with ServiceNow (an IT operations workflow automation platform) to support submission of clinical ticket workflows including equipment failures. Its AI chatbot helps streamline this process for busy clinical staff. Its integration with Microsoft Teams facilitates communication and collaboration between clinical and back-office staff.

  Cons:

  • Limited patient engagement: Mobile Heartbeat's patient engagement feature is limited to voice only, using only the patient bedside telephone for clinician-to-patient communication. Potential customers prioritizing patient engagement features should be cautious.
  • Limited virtual care: Mobile Heartbeat's products have limited utility for home-based and virtual care use cases. Capabilities such as remote monitoring may require third-party partners.
  • Limited provider footprint: Mobile Heartbeat is a wholly owned subsidiary of HCA Healthcare, which constitutes a significant portion of its client base.


• OnPage - Challenger
  

  Pros:

  • Integrations: OnPage's full suite includes integrations with collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Slack (Salesforce), and OpenEMR. The OnPage BlastIT application provides mass notification capabilities.
  • Scheduling: OnPage provides a powerful scheduling system using a built-in scheduler for on-call with escalation pathing and dynamic schedule change management. This feature allows for schedule adjustments, accommodating unexpected changes and ensuring continuous coverage. The on-call scheduler is accessible from OnPage's mobile app, ensuring accessibility and real-time updates wherever needed.
  • Pager replacement: OnPage has an extensive pager replacement experience, an important factor for many hospital systems looking to modernize their endpoint devices.

  Cons:

  • Emerging CC&C capabilities: OnPage has offered secure messaging and incident management capabilities since 2014. As a Challenger, its traditional pager replacement offering has been incrementally enhanced to include critical support for CC&C use cases.
  • Lack of virtual care: OnPage's platform does not natively support videoconferencing-based virtual care use cases. At the time of this research, it has no bidirectional video chat capability.
  • Lagging AI incorporation: OnPage is trailing in building out AI for its products. AI-based user interface enhancements are considered the next step in user experience improvements.


• Oracle Health - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Marketing strategy: Oracle Health works closely with the healthcare provider C-suite (the CNO, CNIO, CIO and CFO). Its market strategy goal is to understand and explain how its CC&C platform can improve KPIs in nursing operations, digital care delivery, and financials.
  • Global presence: In addition to many notable North American hospitals and health systems, Oracle Health provides support in EMEA and APAC. These installations and CC&C product offerings are deployed on-premises, over private clouds and through public cloud service providers.
  • Product offerings: The Oracle Health EHR Nursing Mobility product includes secure communication capabilities that adhere to real-time health system (RTHS) principles. The product transfers critical lab results and data from the EHR to support care-team collaboration and situational awareness surrounding the patient. Its configurable parameters allow emergency events to be prioritized, with notifications sent to the appropriate care-team members based on roles and patient assignments.

  Cons:

  • Stationary business model: Oracle Health expects no significant changes to its CC&C business model but anticipates platform expansion into home-care and virtual care markets. Since these are not new venues for CC&C solutions, it portends a conservative CC&C vision and product roadmap, with more services provided by third-party partners year over year.
  • Overall viability: The adoption of Oracle Health's CC&C platform corresponds with the penetration of its Oracle Health EHR. In 2023, Oracle Health lost customers due to healthcare provider decisions to switch EHRs. As Oracle Health's EHR footprint is negatively impacted by EHR replacement and M&A activity, reducing its total addressable market, it has experienced increased user growth among its existing customer base.
  • Workflow/automation: Oracle Health's CC&C platform currently has limited workflow orchestration and process automation.


• PerfectServe - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Flexible access: PerfectServe is a cloud-native platform designed to provide endpoint flexibility for mobile device and web access. This flexibility enables the use of both corporate devices and personally owned patient and family devices.
  • Diverse care venues: PerfectServe enables patient-centered communication regardless of location, including patient home, clinics, rehabilitation and other care venues outside of the hospital. PerfectServe also supports virtual care use cases.
  • Strong integrations: PerfectServe's integrations cover all major CC&C contributing technologies including lab, radiology, patient transport, real-time location system (RTLS), telephone/PBX and paging, as well as other CC&C solutions.

  Cons:

  • Limited geographic strategy: Although PerfectServe covers North America and EMEA, its current support staff is in North America. PerfectServe uses channel partners for non-North American client sales and support.
  • Care-team experience: PerfectServe's ability to consolidate, route and deliver patient-related event information can contribute to alert and alarm fatigue for clinical staff. Potential customers considering PerfectServe should plan on spending substantial time setting up rules or engaging Perfectserve's professional services.
  • Marketing execution: PerfectServe Unite consists of five distinct products priced and licensed separately and can be bundled and branded under PerfectServe Unite. That said, PerfectServe market messaging does not clearly explain the relationship between the various acquired products and the larger PerfectServe Unite platform. Buyers may view this as a potential integration challenge.


• QliqSOFT - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Market understanding: QliqSOFT closely tracks the market needs of each market segment within the vertical (ambulatory, acute, postacute) by following regulations, subscribing to industry publications, attending conferences, reading research, and talking to prospects, analysts, and thought leaders to understand pain points and competitor solutions.
  • Market strategy: QliqSOFT creates differentiated messaging for each vertical segment determined by market and competitive analysis, which is incorporated into website content, thought leadership, social media marketing, and sales enablement/training. For new capabilities or enhancements to existing products, QliqSOFT recruits clients to pilot them and quantify value.
  • Sales strategy: QliqSOFT's sales strategy includes working with EHR solution vendors and reseller partners. An inbound sales team identifies and works with qualified leads, and a consultative sales group conducts cold calls and digital outreach, and follows up on conference leads.

  Cons:

  • Geographic strategy: QliqSOFT does not deploy its platform outside North America or localize its product suite to support different languages and geographies, making it unsuitable for international customers.
  • Outpatient CC&C vision: QliqSOFT's CC&C platform centers on secure messaging, care-team collaboration, patient engagement and virtual care. QliqSOFT does not currently support acute care requirements, such as real-time medical device integration or alarms and notifications management.
  • Limited voice support: QliqSOFT's CC&C platform does not support PBX integration or provide pager emulation.


• Stryker - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Care-team support: Stryker simplifies nursing and care-team workflows and improves communications with intelligent routing, prioritization and escalation of calls, texts, notifications and alarms.
  • Clinician engagement: Stryker's clinical communication and workflow solution helps to strengthen staff safety and reduce alarm fatigue, cognitive burden, and time to action or intervention.
  • Diverse user access: 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:

  • Fewer smartphone deployments: Most of Stryker's CC&C installations are Smartbadge or Minibadge only. While these voice-activated, hands-free wearables are CC&C market differentiators, they are not typically installed enterprisewide, limiting their overall impact.
  • Redefined market: EHR megasuite vendor offerings will remain a constant replacement threat, given their increasing market footprint, their embedded CC&C capabilities, and the scope of their enterprise agreements. Stryker and others will continue to compensate for CC&C capability gaps. However, as megasuite CC&C offerings mature, stand-alone CC&C vendor platforms must innovate and redefine the market instead of augmenting EHR functionality.
  • Corporate strategy: The strategic importance of the Vocera acquisition to Stryker's product suite is both evident and unclear, leaving the market wondering about Stryker's commitment to the CC&C space.


• symplr - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Support for staff shortages: symplr's innovative and expansive view of workforce management in healthcare includes a pivotal and differentiating role for CC&C. symplr's CC&C platform optimizes care-team productivity, collaboration and nursing operations to help mitigate significant clinical staffing shortages.
  • Facilitates new staffing models: The real-time integration of symplr's CC&C and Physician Scheduling products will facilitate emerging team-based staffing models. Integrating these products with symplr's workforce management platform will enable industry movement toward on-demand staffing.
  • AI innovation: symplr's CC&C SaaS platform will handle increasingly complex CC&C workflows by appropriately augmenting and automating manual messaging tasks. The increased use of AI/ML provides the necessary healthcare team context to optimize care-team communication.

  Cons:

  • Geographic strategy: symplr only deploys its platform in North America and does not localize its product suite to support different languages and geographies, making it unsuitable for international customers.
  • Vertical/industry strategy: symplr's Clinical Communications product does not broadly support patient and family engagement use cases. symplr acknowledges the importance of patient engagement as part of a broader communication strategy. It has, however, prioritized role-based caregiver communication to keep the solution focused on the communication elements most critical to real-time care delivery. It says this limits the influence of other communication sources that might distract from that pursuit or add to communication overload in the complex clinical environment.
  • Overall viability: symplr is a privately held company backed by private equity investment firms Clearlake Capital and Charlesbank Capital Partners and is not subject to SEC scrutiny, regulations or reporting requirements, so additional effort is required to assess its financial performance.


• TigerConnect - Leader
  

  Pros:

  • Comprehensive platform: TigerConnect's suite of products provides a comprehensive collection of CC&C capabilities that support the critical communication needs of a modern healthcare provider environment.
  • Strong integrations: TigerConnect has strong integration capabilities with the EHR, nurse call systems, alarms and notification systems, scheduling, IT service management (ITSM) and support surrounding workflows and virtual care use cases. It also includes a compliant method for keeping the patient and family informed.
  • Flexible access: The platform provides flexible and secure text, voice and video communication through its smartphone application available on common application marketplaces, as well as browser and desktop apps.

  Cons:

  • Geographic strategy: TigerConnect only deploys its platform in North America and does not localize its product suite to support different languages and geographies, making it difficult to use for international customers.
  • Customer experience: End users have reported slower response times than expected for customer support assistance.
  • Product complexity: Users of TigerConnect's multiple products may find it difficult to navigate across the large number of application features and capabilities. This complexity can make the user experience challenging when crossing from one application function to another.


• Zebra Technologies - Niche Player
  

  Pros:

  • Hardware manufacturing: Zebra is a leading manufacturer of clinical environment-ready point-of-care devices, including handheld communication devices, bar code scanners and label printers. In recent years, it has expanded into software offerings, positioning itself as an end-to-end solution provider.
  • Endpoint integration: Zebra's mobile computers, bar code label printers and scanning devices are integral to positive patient identification and supply-chain/logistics solutions used in hospitals globally. Its devices enable healthcare professionals to streamline workflows, enhance patient safety and improve operational efficiency.
  • Global partner ecosystem: Zebra solutions are reliable and trusted in demanding clinical environments across multiple geographies, supported by specialized healthcare partners. Zebra's extensive partnerships and interoperability across platforms allow customers to achieve unique CC&C solutions that are tailored to their specific needs in both acute and post-acute environments.

  Cons:

  • EHR integration: Zebra's Workcloud Communication suite of tools does not support linking live communication to the patient's clinical context within its mobile app.
  • Focused CC&C: Zebra does not create alert and alarm software but is interoperable with leading providers.
  • Business model: Zebra was historically focused on selling its purpose-built hardware solutions for the healthcare industry. It has optimized its hardware and endpoint operating system platform for CC&C use cases, features and capabilities.

Reference

• Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Clinical Communication and Collaboration, 18 November 2024, ID G00800101

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