Mr. Mannheimer: There is a real interesting dynamic going on. The current environment is very constrained now. We can look at it in terms of hospitals and physician markets, neither of which is very healthy. But I would say that more severe problems lie in the hospital sector, where budgets are virtually frozen for any new projects for IT and certainly the only IT projects that are moving forward are those that were approved last year or certainly before October of 2008. So I would characterize the economic climate as struggling, with very little access to capital for IT projects. That's on the hospital side. On the physician side, I think it's just a little bit healthier. But nonetheless, what we are seeing as we read the data is that visits to doctors are fewer, prescription growth is flat and negative, elective procedures are being pushed out because of the economy. So I think physicians also are feeling the pinch of the recession. And for that reason, I think buying has slowed down in the near term. The dynamic I am talking about refers to the health IT stimulus and what I think that could mean for one, two, three years from now, I think would be very positive.
TWST: What would you highlight in terms of technology that has been developed or
advanced even within the past year? Is there anything that might be particularly
appealing when the market picks up again?
Mr. Mannheimer: Let's start then with the physician aspect. E-prescribing
technology. That basically is the ability for a physician to generate a
prescription from either their laptop computer or a handheld computer and either
electronically transmit it to the pharmacy or print it out for the patient. This
is a technology that has been around for 10 years, yet just in the last one year
to two years, I would say the adoption rate is improving and I think that has a
lot to do with advances in wireless technology. So 10 years ago, when this
electronic prescribing was introduced, I think the infrastructure by and large
wasn't in place to do it properly, but now that's changed. So you see e-
prescribing proliferating, more mainstream, which is good because the physicians
are being incentivized with monetary rewards for doing more e-prescribing. As
the economy improves, you'll see more e-prescribing going on due to the better
technology that's available as well as monetary incentives to do so.
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