26 Aug 2015

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) healthcare market is seeing the widespread deployment of mobile technologies, with the short-term outlook for the implementation of mobility within this space looking particularly strong. Indeed, a recently published report from IDC Health Insights shows that enterprise mobility will have penetrated over 80% of MEA healthcare organizations by 2017.

According to the report, which is based on IDC's annual survey of the region's CIO community, corporate smart devices have already been deployed by over one-third of MEA healthcare organizations, with another 50% planning to adopt them by 2017. Mobilizing enterprise applications, adopting mobile device management (MDM) solutions, and developing policies for enabling enterprise mobility are the top priorities of the IT executives that are planning to embrace mobility.

IT security remains the greatest concern for healthcare CIOs, with the surveyed IT leaders identifying insider threats and staff-related issues as their most critical security challenges. These concerns are being further aggravated by insufficient budgets, the lack of mature security strategies, and a shortage of skilled IT security personnel.

"The need for a mobile healthcare workforce will be one of the key drivers of mobile technology investments in MEA over the coming years," says Nino Giguashvili, lead research analyst for CEMA at IDC Health Insights. "In line with the rapidly-rising importance of enterprise mobility within the MEA healthcare industry, mobile security will dominate investments in IT security solutions. Investments in MDM solutions will see particularly strong growth."

IDC Health Insights' recently published study ‘MEA Healthcare Going Mobile: CIO Summit Survey Highlights’ (July 2015, Doc #EHI07X) highlights the key findings of IDC's MEA CIO Summit Survey. It examines the adoption patterns of 3^rd Platform technologies (mobility, big data, cloud, and social media) and looks at the IT challenges across the healthcare vertical in the MEA region. The full report is available here. For further information about this report or to learn more about IDC's research into the MEA healthcare industry, please contact Anulekha Shetty, IDC's regional marketing manager, on +971 4 433 2597 or at ashetty@idc.com.

About IDC Health Insights

IDC Health Insights assists health businesses and IT leaders, as well as the suppliers that serve them, in making more effective technology decisions by providing accurate, timely, and insightful fact-based research and consulting services. Staffed by senior analysts with decades of industry experience, our global research analyzes and advises on business and technology issues facing the payer, provider and life sciences industries. For more information, please visit www.idc-hi.com, email info@idc-hi.com, or visit the IDC Health Insights Community at idc-community.com/health.