Sitting here amidst this deep recession (some might say edging on depression) I think most people would be surprised to hear the report I read today that health care IT spending was expected to grow in 2009. Here’s an excerpt from the article and a link to the original study:

IT spending will grow for several reasons, including plans by the incoming Obama Administration to fund health IT; consumer demands to control healthcare costs; providers’ desire to use IT to improve efficiency and increase margins; and payers turning to IT to help manage their costs and better track whether providers are meeting wellness goals.

HII predicts that in particular, healthcare organizations will invest in business intelligence software, whose uptake will grow rapidly through 2011 as a means of improving health outcomes. HII also predicts that new products will emerge for use in remote patient monitoring. Still another trend anticipated by HII is that IT outsourcing will to grow

The craziest part of this is that it’s the second such report that health care IT spending will be growing despite the widespread slowdown of investment in IT. Here’s the first such report and an excerpt:

While global IT spending is expected to contract through next year, the healthcare IT sector should grow, according to new data from research firm Datamonitor. IT budgets should shrink in 2009, partially because of the down economy, but also due to increasingly cautious budget moves by IT administrators over the past few years.

Let’s hope that spending increases if Obama does invest $50 billion in health care IT. Plus, it’s hard to decrease the level of investment in health care IT. We’ve needed more cash in health care IT for quite a while.