An Expansive Look at the Middle East EMR Market

Outside of the US, KLAS’ brand recognition is strongest in the Middle East. The provider organizations there are very interested in KLAS’ ratings and reports, and past reports have been well received. Organizations have even encouraged their vendors to participate in KLAS research, and KLAS representatives have been able to travel there (despite the pandemic) to further connect with providers and vendors.

Consequentially, our Middle East & Africa EMR 2021 report examines twice as many vendors as our last report in 2019, increasing the number from 5 measured vendors to 11 and providing more expansive insights into the Middle Eastern market in particular. With this report, we wanted to examine the customer satisfaction, market share, and recent wins and market energy of EMR vendors in the Middle East and Africa regions. 

Highlights from Big-Name Vendors 

There are several big players in the Middle East EMR market. This includes Cerner, which has had a presence in the Middle East for 10+ years. They haven’t won a lot of new contracts over the last 5 years, but they continue to lead in performance, thanks to their focus on meeting customer expectations during the pandemic.

Another highlight is Health Insights and their new system, MEDiCACLOUDCARE. Health Insights has done a great job of helping their customers migrate to this web-based platform, and customers say it is much easier to use and faster than the vendor’s older platform, MEDiCAPLUS.

Surprises from Up-and-Coming Vendors

One interesting trend we have seen is the increase in new solutions being adopted in the Middle East, mostly by smaller hospitals. Some solutions are being rolled out at a rapid rate. Vendors like Cloud Solutions and IQVIA have been adopted in multiple health clusters (or regions) in Saudi Arabia, despite having little to no commercial presence in the region during the past couple of years.

As time goes on, it will be interesting to see how well Cloud Solutions and IQVIA scale to larger hospitals and meet customers’ long-term needs. Many of the customers are in a sort of honeymoon phase with their systems; they are accustomed to using paper systems, so they don’t have anything to compare their electronic systems to. Their expectations are sometimes lower as a result, making them easier to please. KLAS will continue to monitor these newly deployed solutions to see how well they continue to meet expectations.

Contracts in Saudi Arabia & Egypt

Saudi Arabia has multiple health clusters, and the hospitals in each cluster typically select a single EMR for the entire region. In the last 5 years alone, healthcare organizations in Saudi Arabia have signed contracts with 14 different vendors—the number of new vendors coming on the scene is truly staggering.

Some vendors have contracted with healthcare organizations across different clusters in Saudi Arabia, landing 15–20 hospitals per deal. Others are fighting over contracting with private healthcare groups or standalone hospitals; those contracts would result in only 1–4 hospitals per deal. In the future, we are interested to see how well these organizations implement and deploy their systems.

In Egypt, DXC Technology (recently acquired by Dedalus) won a large contract in 2019, and they are now rolling out their system to dozens of hospitals. Another vendor was recently awarded a contract in the country and is in the process of finalizing it with their customers. These deployments are part of an overarching effort to digitize Egypt’s healthcare environments. We are interested to see how successfully Egypt’s provider organizations integrate with each other post-go-live.

Looking to the Future

KLAS currently reports on some vendors’ market share in Africa, but for the most part, purchase energy in Africa has been low. As KLAS continues to grow, we intend to cover more of the HIT market in Africa and share greater details in the future.

For the Middle East & Africa EMR 2021 report, we hoped to bring all our findings together in one easy-to-digest resource and give provider organizations the tools they need to make informed decisions. Because the number of vendors in the report has increased and our data has been well received, we want to continue to pour more fuel on the fire, so to speak, and deliver more insights into the Middle Eastern and African markets. For more details, be sure to check out the report.

Photo credit: morgan rauscher, Adobe Stock