October 22, 2013 — An IHS report confirmed Perceptive Software’s Acuo vendor neutral archive (VNA) the world market share leader among independent software vendors (ISVs). According to the report, Acuo led all other independent VNAs worldwide with 42.3 percent of total studies managed. The next closest independent VNA competitor profiled in the study is estimated to hold only 17.6 percent of total studies managed.
The IHS report, entitled “World Market for Medical Enterprise Data Storage — 2013,” describes independent VNA software vendors as those companies that do not also provide picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) viewing solutions.
"IHS expanded its 2013 report to include a separate breakout of market share growth among independent VNA providers,” said Larry Sitka, principal solution architect for Perceptive Software and founder of Acuo Technologies. “We agree that the concept of independence is paramount when it comes to selecting a vendor neutral archive. Our healthcare clients recognize the importance of the organizational freedom, IT negotiating leverage and other benefits that are possible when the VNA layer is agnostic to other clinical software and archives.”
The IHS report compares world market share of all VNA suppliers, including independents and PACS-affiliated vendors. Market share growth trends in 2013 support an IHS prediction in the 2012 edition of report that stated, “as the VNA market develops towards full enterprise integration of image and non-image data, independent VNA vendors are projected to benefit the most.”
Acuo has partner relationships with PACS vendors and other solution providers that include AT&T, Dell, EMC, Fujifilm, GNAX Health, IBM, NetApp and Philips Healthcare.
IHS reported that a VNA is considered to be a “comprehensive solution” with features that include at a minimum:
- Digital imaging and communications in medicine (DICOM) and Health Level 7 (HL7) communication
- Support for multiple PACS
- Non-DICOM data sharing
- Clinical lifecycle management
- Security, long-term archive and disaster recovery
The IHS report added that VNAs may also include Web-based access, a zero-client universal viewer and an cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS) registry and repository.
“As healthcare organizations make decisions about replacing aging PACS and other clinical systems, many are looking at new IT solutions for managing unstructured content that make it easier and less costly to get patient information to the point of need across enterprise boundaries,” said Jon Hamdorf, director, global VNA solutions, Perceptive Software. “The Acuo team not only built a comprehensive solution that takes clinical interoperability to a high level but also built strong partnerships with other leading IT providers so that our customers have many different options when deciding how to best deploy a VNA. It explains why Acuo market share continues to grow even as others are shrinking.”
The Acuo VNA is part of a unified content platform offered by Perceptive Software that combines VNA with enterprise content management (ECM) to improve patient care and physician satisfaction by providing more complete patient information. Combining ECM and VNA into a single platform enables healthcare organizations to manage and store all forms of unstructured content, business and clinical, and deliver it via a single viewer in context of the patient record through the EMR. This improves healthcare data liquidity, driving data sharing to the point of care to facilitate timely physician decision-making and better collaboration.
These trends and more are discussed further in the IHS report, “World Market for Medical Enterprise Data Storage – 2013”
For more information: www.perceptivesoftware.com, www.acuotech.com
February 15, 2024 
