Cardiology 2022
Which Vendors Are Holding Ground in This Volatile Market?

INFINITT Satisfies Smaller Organizations with Strong Implementations & Support; Fujifilm Improves Significantly through Innovation & Relationships

INFINITT’s customer base has expanded in recent years, mostly among smaller organizations. Newly live cardiology customers report smooth implementations due to attentive vendor teams and strong initial training. Quick turnaround times from knowledgeable individuals drive strong support satisfaction. The web-based cardiology suite (which shares a unified database with INFINITT’s other imaging solutions) and straightforward structured reporting meet most users’ needs, though adoption is primarily of noninvasive modules and many view the solution as unpolished and struggle with administrative features. Fujifilm customers have felt improved satisfaction over the last year, citing better development, road-map communication, and efforts to keep promises and avoid nickel-and-diming (something the market generally struggles with). Synapse Cardiovascular is seen as stable and usable but basic, though users who have adopted Advanced Reporting note improved customizability and satisfaction with structured reports. The rollout of Advanced Reporting was bumpy for some but cushioned by Fujifilm’s customer-centric relationships and support. Generally, optimism is high due to promised improvements and an initiative to unify radiology and cardiology in one product on a single database, but some customers are skeptical of Fujifilm’s ability to deliver due to past experiences with slow delivery and unkept promises.

Change Healthcare & Merative (IBM) Remain Market Leaders in Structured Reporting Adoption

Change Healthcare has been one of the market leaders in structured reporting adoption for over three years, largely thanks to their product’s stability and easy-to-use structured reports. The customer experience has remained steady; some note improved responsiveness from the vendor, and moving customers to the cloud is on the vendor’s road map—KLAS has validated one organization that transitioned to the cloud for echo. Issues persist with bumpy implementations and upgrades, nickel-and-diming around licenses and maintenance, and a lack of transparency about the product road map, driving nearly 20% of respondents to plan to move to another vendor. Merge Cardio from Merative (a new company from Francisco Partners, who recently acquired many IBM Watson Health assets) has a similar record of broad adoption due to high-quality, user-friendly structured reporting. Customers highlight strong end-to-end integration across Merative’s portfolio. Support experiences vary—some have great relationships with Merative, and others feel the support team has become overly sales driven. An unclear product road map has led to a perception of slow development, exacerbated by poor upgrades and implementations that disrupt adoption of new technology. Due to these issues, over one-quarter of respondents (all interviewed preacquisition) plan to move to another vendor; others report optimism about the future with Merative.

Satisfaction with GE Healthcare Continues to Drop Due to Diminishing Relationships & Development; Philips Customers in Limbo amid Web Transition

Since GE Healthcare won the 2021 Best in KLAS award for cardiology, their score has dropped nearly 18 points due largely to customers feeling that GE has become disengaged. Most respondents still see the cardiology solution as stable and easy to use with good structured reporting, especially in echo and cath labs—cath adoption is a particular anchor for GE due to pairing the reporting with their strong cath lab equipment and hemodynamics. However, customers are frustrated by slow development and relationship issues such as delayed responses, nickel-and-diming, and undelivered promises. Philips customers are in transition as the vendor rolls out web-based pieces for IntelliSpace Cardiovascular while moving to a long-promised fully web-based platform. Customers using a hybrid of thick- and thin-client pieces find the technology and vendor support to be less reliable than with previous thick-client deployments, which already had highly variable customer experiences. This has caused some concern about Philips’ ability to deliver and support a fully web-based solution, though some are optimistic their experience will improve when the platform becomes fully web based. Overall, customers find that Philips offers strong reactive support but lacks the proactivity and executive involvement needed for a true partnership.

Epic Rolls Out New Echo Reports as Cupid Customers Continue to Report Unexpectedly High Costs & Build Times

Epic Cupid offers structured reporting for cardiology but no image storage solution (and is thus categorized as a “component” product in KLAS’ research). Historically, much of the work of building structured reports has rested on the customer; Epic’s new echo templates, which have been adopted by a limited number of customers, represent movement toward offering the customer more. Respondents who built out their structured reporting commonly describe long build times (some lasting years) and high resource requirements, leading to higher costs than originally anticipated and budgeted for. KLAS has interviewed multiple customers who failed to go live with structured reporting for those reasons. Those who are live share positive post-implementation experiences. While Cupid is not seen as particularly robust for structured reporting, customers appreciate its tight integration with other Epic products as well as Epic’s responsiveness, engagement, and support. Cupid is largely adopted for echo and cath, but customers hope it will one day be a unified structured reporting platform across all modules. Most organizations are not there today and supplement Cupid with non-Epic products in other modules, such as vascular and pediatrics.

Lack of Cardiology Knowledge from Intelerad (Limited Data) Creates Post-Acquisition Support Difficulties; Siemens Healthineers Performs Consistently with Little Forward Momentum

Intelerad (limited data) has acquired several imaging solutions, including Digisonics’ DigiView in 2020 and LUMEDX’s Apollo Advance in 2021. While customers of both struggled with functionality and vendor relationships before the acquisitions, further drops in support quality have been caused by subsequent turnover, slower response times, and a lack of cardiology knowledge among Intelerad resources. LUMEDX customers especially feel Intelerad is too focused on sales and doesn’t understand their organizations. Structured reporting adoption for both products is the lowest in this report, and customers have seen little development since the acquisitions. Siemens Healthineers customers are loyal and generally satisfied; structured reporting adoption is narrower and less advanced compared to that of other customer bases. Siemens’ knowledgeable, helpful staff provides strong reactive support, and users are highly satisfied with the robust capabilities and customizable templates. Customers’ core complaint is that there has been no significant development in years; they say Siemens is slow to respond to enhancement requests and sometimes leaves them undone. While no respondents have active plans to leave, the lack of development is leading some to consider other options.

Product Update: Agfa HealthCare & Sectra
KLAS has validated several organizations on Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging for Cardiology. It integrates with third-party ASCEND for structured reporting capabilities, which five of the validated customers have primarily adopted in echo and vascular modules. Cath adoption is low, and general uptake of the platform is slow. KLAS has also validated early customers using Sectra’s Enterprise Imaging for Cardiology for imaging storage and structured reporting (also via ASCEND).

Hemodynamics Market: Merative (IBM) Continues to Lead; Change Healthcare, Philips Improve

For over 12 years, Merative has led the highly regulated hemodynamics market. Customers find Merge Hemo to be stable and intuitive and appreciate the vendor’s back-end improvements that have made product management and customization easier. However, workflows and functionality have largely been stagnant, which customers believe is allowing other vendors to catch up. The support remains adequate, with early reports of improvement after dips in proactivity and executive involvement due to turnover.

Change Healthcare’s customer experience is improving; respondents report an improved vendor partnership due to more frequent meetings with support and sales representatives. Customers are also encouraged by movement toward the new web-based version, though those who upgraded have experienced significant functionality challenges in the transition. Despite the strong technology, the overall experience with Cardiology Hemo continues to be dampened by high costs, nickel-and-diming for basic functionality, integration issues, and inadequate training.

Philips has seen a 10-point increase in customer satisfaction over the last two years, driven partly by significant stabilization in the latest Xper Hemodynamics version (which a number of respondents have transitioned to). Customers also praise Philips’ support team, highlighting their knowledge and responsiveness. However, turnover has perpetuated a lack of proactivity and executive involvement, and high costs prevent some organizations from upgrading, leaving them to deal with older versions’ bugs and integration issues.

Mac-Lab is the most highly rated solution in GE Healthcare’s portfolio; it is widely perceived as strong, customizable, easy to use, and able to meet most functionality needs. However, customer satisfaction has recently declined following multiple years of improvement. This is driven by decreased vendor engagement, causing greater variability in the vendor’s relationships and less perceived dedication to innovation. Reports of integration difficulties have also increased. Due to Mac-Lab’s strong functionality, most customers remain loyal, but support and development issues are driving some to look elsewhere.

About This Report

Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT solutions and services their organizations use. For this report, different data collection time frames were used to correctly capture market dynamics; interviews were conducted from April 2021 to April 2022 for cardiology solutions and from July 2021 to July 2022 for hemodynamics solutions. Feedback was collected using KLAS’ standard quantitative evaluation for healthcare software, which is composed of 16 numeric ratings questions and 4 yes/no questions, all weighted equally. Combined, the ratings for these questions make up the overall performance score, which is measured on a 100-point scale. The questions are organized into six customer experience pillars—culture, loyalty, operations, product, relationship, and value.

Sample Sizes

Unless otherwise noted, sample sizes displayed throughout this report (e.g., n=16) represent the total number of unique customer organizations interviewed for a given vendor or solution. However, it should be noted that to allow for the representation of differing perspectives within any one customer organization, samples may include surveys from different individuals at the same organization. The table below shows the total number of unique organizations interviewed for each vendor or solution as well as the total number of individual respondents.