CONCORD, Mass., September 6, 2007 — Gantry Group, LLC recently completed its annual study, MCO Clinical Technology Expenditures 2007, to ascertain MCO executives’ investment plans over the next 12 months. MCOs will broaden and deepen their adoption of clinical technology across all major clinical solution categories over the next year. Today, MCOs’ adoption of clinical technology is focused on Utilization Management (86%), Case Management (76%) and Evidence-Based Guideline (71%) solutions. In general, over half (53%) of MCOs’ total clinical technology budgets are allocated to these three clinical solution categories. While Utilization Management, Case Management and Evidence-Based Guideline solutions will continue to dominate MCOs’ attention over the next 12 months, MCOs will substantially strengthen their adoption of Business Intelligence (36% growing to 50% of MCOs) and Care Management (40% growing to 55% of MCOs) solutions during the next year.

Executives from 42 MCOs participated in this study, comprised of CEOs (24%), Medical Directors (29%) and CIOs (15%). All size MCOs were evenly represented in the study, ranging from under 50,000 to over 5 million covered lives. The study revealed the following additional top level findings:

- Today, nearly half of MCOs (48%) spend under $2M annually on all healthcare technology.
- The majority of MCOs allocate less than 20% of their annual healthcare technology budget to clinical technology solutions.
- 48% of MCOs participating in this study plan to increase their commitment to third party vendor clinical solutions – moving away from custom in-house solutions.
- For MCOs planning to increase commitment to custom in-house solutions, 88% justify their decision by their need to attain greater control over the solution.
- For MCOs planning to increase commitment to vendor-provisioned solutions, 75% justify their decision to attain quicker time to solution deployment.
- For most clinical solution categories, MCOs will move away from custom in-house solutions over the next 12 months in favor of packaged vendor solutions/services.

About Gantry Group    
Gantry Group is a strategic marketing firm that specializes in guiding healthcare solution vendors to build offerings around payers’ and providers’ urgent needs and challenges. For the past decade, Gantry Group’s customized market research and strategy advisory services have armed the world’s leading healthcare solution providers with targeted market intelligence to support their strategic business decisions and guide their solution roadmaps.

Gantry Group applies its customized market research services to strategically advise companies to build and sell successful offerings matched to what their target markets truly value. Gantry Group delivers to corporate marketers the firsthand market insights and predictive measurement capabilities that allow them to make informed decisions as they plan for current market needs and anticipate emerging market trends.

Through Gantry Group’s market intelligence, market research, and ROI/TCO benchmarking service suites, more than 450 client companies have identified, positioned and quantified their value within the marketplace. Additional information about Gantry Group can be found at www.gantrygroup.com.

For study results, please call Gantry Group at 978-371-7557 ext 18, or click here to download directly.

###