Suppliers of Existing Systems in Municipal Healthcare Facing the Arrival of Large-Scale EHR Suites

Abstract

With backing from national health authorities, large-scale electronic health record (EHR) suites have increasingly entered the European healthcare market. The overall goal for these systems is to fulfill the needs of healthcare workers in hospitals, nursing homes, home-care service, and general practitioner (GP) clinics. The EHR suites will replace existing EHRs in their targeted area. However, the national and regional authorities cannot mandate that municipalities and GPs implement these new EHR systems. Therefore, there will still be ways for the suppliers of existing systems to compete for market share and provide municipalities and GPs with viable alternatives. We explore these issues by focusing on how suppliers of the EHRs currently used by municipalities maneuver under the imminent threat from an EHR suite. Empirically, we focus on the three principal suppliers of EHR systems to the Norwegian municipal healthcare market. They are facing the introduction of a large-scale EHR suite in Central Norway in 2022 combined with the long-term national ambition of a common EHR system for the rest of the municipal health sector in Norway. Conceptually, we draw on information infrastructure literature.