AIMS systems are deployed in 12-15% of the anesthetizing locations in the United States.  This percentage has not significantly changed in the last 10 years.  The current market is made up of primarily large, well-funded academic centers and community hospitals — those that possess the large capital needed for implementing and maintaining the current solutions.  These centers represent a small fraction of the potential market.

The other 85% of providers and hospitals have few viable solutions to choose from if they desire to:

1. Convert from a paper record to a digital electronic anesthesia record.
2. Accurately and easily capture all of their valuable clinical quality and performance data.
3. Automatically report specific government-mandated compliance metrics to avoid being penalized with the loss of revenue.
4. Streamline their billing process to maximize revenue.

The most significant barrier to engaging new customers for an AIMS product has not been addressed:  cost.

The typical up-front costs to purchase and install an AIMS system are approximately $65,000 per anesthetizing location with an additional yearly maintenance contract of $2500-$10,000 per anesthetizing location.  This ongoing expense is related to the need for technology support, data storage, and the management of upgrading servers, storage and operating systems.   All of these are necessary to support the continuous operation of AIMS being used in mission-critical areas.

In addition, due to the complexity of these systems and the daily need to troubleshoot technology issues, IT support personnel need to be dedicated to these systems regardless of size of deployment.   A typical sized deployment (10-12 operating rooms), requires1-2 FTEs of IT support to maintain these systems at an average cost of $65K/yr plus benefits per IT specialist.

The costs and infrastructure needed for these systems to properly function (eg:  physiologic vital sign monitor capture, specialized networking installation, servers, and storage), limit universal deployment to all anesthetizing locations. Some of these limitations include adequate budget, support personnel and resources as well as the ability to integrate within a hospital’s own network infrastructure.  In many hospitals, this resource intensity limits deployment to the traditional operating room only.  As hospital budgets become squeezed by the continual changes in the health care environment, these budgetary and technology issues will further limit the full deployment of these systems resulting in a lack of uniformity in documentation type (paper vs. electronic) and a loss of valuable revenue-generating data in the key areas of growth for procedures and anesthetizing locations –those outside the traditional operating room.

Some companies that have (or are trying to develop) solutions still have not addressed many of the issues listed above.  Most of them have mirrored the existing larger solution products and simply placed them in a different technology delivery system (e.g. tablet technology like the iPad).