Healthcare Informatics 2007 "Top 100" Leading Vendor

Next month, Healthcare Informatics will release its 2007 "Top 100" vendors, ranking HIT vendors by their annual revenue. We helped HI fine tune the list this year to add several "missing suspects" and also prune some non-HIT vendors claiming top spots. This series of posts will preview the Top 100 list, starting with 2007's "King Kong" of HIT vendors: McKesson. Thanks to their acquisition of Per Se last year with a half billion in annual revenue, McKesson now tops the list with almost $2B in annual revenue. Amazing in light of their start in Walt Huff's garage back in the mid-70s with a Four Phase minicomputer running a system called MedPro, that introduced Order Entry to the masses. For almost 2 decades, HBO (initials of founders Huff, Barrington and Owens) trailed SMS and McAuto for number 1, then finally caught up to SMS in the late 90s for the number 1 spot, and has not been topped since. Their growth has been fueled by an amazing series of acquisitions, from entire HIS vendors (e.g: IBAX, McAuto, SAI, etc.) and standalone departmental systems (e.g: CliniCom, ESI, HCSI, etc.). These scores of acquisitions have been matched by strong sales of indigenous products like Star, Horizon, and lately by their red hot Client/Server system: "Paragon," targeting the small hospital market. The big question is: can any other vendor challenge their dominant #1 position? Stay tuned for the next posts to learn about who's #2, #3, etc.