But has it got legs? EHR & RCM system deals on the rise
pgresearchWednesday, December 16th, 2009
After a brief lull due to capital budget freezes and uncertainty around the specifics of the HITECH Act, there appears to be real progress in the adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) systems.
A combination of HITECH money, an increasing number of Pay-for-Performance programs and favorable financing options from IT vendors is driving the adoption of EHRs. And, with a clearer definition of Meaningful Use, even more deals are expected to close.
Our network reports an obvious increase in deals in Q4; activity that is expected to continue to ramp up through late Q1 and into early Q2 as pressure increases to be online by the 2011 deadline.
So, has this activity got legs or is it a one-time spike for the major players – MDRX, QSII, MCK, ATHN? Too early to say, frankly, but of these names ATHN appears best positioned to sustain growth with a best-of-breed RCM product and a market focus that includes sectors such as large physicians’ groups that do not directly benefit from the stimulus plan.
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Tags: EMR, Healthcare IT
Posted in Health Care | No Comments »
Polysilicon pricing: soft and softer
Ishita ManjrekarWednesday, December 9th, 2009
Silicon prices from major producers have declined almost 20 percent over the past few months and, while a couple of producers maintain they are holding fast, the fact that most have reduced prices will be pressure enough to create equilibrium on the low end. As to pricing trends in 2010, our network thinks silicon prices will hold steady into Q1-10 as wafer/cell/module vendors buy raw material in preparation for Q2-10 demand from Germany (especially if they expect a FiT reduction on July 1). Past that, however, raw material purchases are expected to slow by May 2010, at which point prices will soften again as it takes about 2 months for polysilicon to be converted to modules.
Tags: PGR, photovoltaic, polysilicon, solar energy
Posted in Energy, Ishita Manjrekar, Solar, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Let the genomics revolution continue…
pgresearchTuesday, December 1st, 2009
After delays and speculation over the release of more stimulus money for genomics research, the National Institute of General Medical Sciences/NIH granted $42.3 million to 14 research teams last week. http://bit.ly/4OtM5U
Up until this announcement, most experts in the next-generation sequencing space had been underwhelmed by the support received by labs. They expected a lot more funding to be made available in 2010, and this has been manifested in these Grand Opportunity grants. While this is definitely a win for the research industry, there are still questions from those in the sequencing space of how much money will actually be invested in a technology that has yet to prove a significant ROI. Pharmaceutical companies, especially with their tighter research budgets, are gun-shy after being burned from their investments in microarray and genomics technologies. But for the long-term thinkers, there is no doubt that the sequencing and gene expression platforms from ILMN, LIFE, Roche, and other up-and-coming companies will transform biomedical research and personalized medicine.
With most of the business coming from research labs, and with an unprecedented amount of grant writing observed by the PGR network, all the major players in the sequencing and gene expression space are expected to benefit from the stimulus funding. In addition to research labs, small biotechs and services companies that recognize the power of these tools are popping up and will reap the rewards as DNA, RNA, and protein analysis becomes a ubiquitous practice in developing diagnostics and drug development. In a time when pharmaceutical and hospital spending is down, the research arm is where the future lies.
Posted in Health Care | No Comments »
Semiconductor Distribution Book-to-Bill Trends Still Look Good
pgresearchTuesday, December 1st, 2009
Some IC manufacturers view semiconductor distributors as the ugly red-headed step child who slaves away, building up inventory and fulfilling orders. When the electronics industry is hot and fabs are at full capacity distributors can get the short end of the stick as IC companies decide to support high volume and key customers instead of the distributors. In the past, when business was slow, IC companies tried to put inventory in the channel in order to move product. By understanding what’s going on with distributors we can get a general sense of demand at IC manufacturers. So the question is what are some metrics or leading indicators to look for when trying to understand if distribution business will be getting better or worse? There are many numbers that people look at like bookings, billings, book-to-bill, lead times, days of inventory pricing, etc…One metric that continues to trend well is book-to-bill ratio; it’s a ratio of bookings within a time period (usually a month or quarter) and billings within the same period. In a slow economy we generally want to see a book-to-bill >1, which usually means that business is picking up. Over the last few months book-to-bill has been >1; partly due to longer lead times which cause customers to place orders. Looking forward things still remain positive in the short term but there is uncertainty in the air and our PGR network remains cautious about the future.
Posted in Bob Nguyen, Semiconductor | No Comments »