The Boston Globe: Desktop Virtualization in Healthcare Forecast to Grow More Than 40% in 2013

New survey shows deployments in healthcare set to outpace all other industries; Strong trend toward thin and zero client endpoints in hospitals is helping to drive rapid growth.

Imprivata®, the leader in secure access and collaboration for healthcare, today announced the results of a new survey on the adoption and use of virtual desktop technologies in healthcare.  Building on its 2011 survey on the same topic, Imprivata fielded the 2012 survey to IT decision makers in organizations throughout North America, generating over 500 responses. Results of the Desktop Virtualization Trends in Healthcare 2012 survey show that adoption of desktop virtualization in hospitals is expected to grow by 44% in 2013, a rate higher than all other industries covered in the survey.  The survey identified a major shift toward the use of thin and zero client endpoints in hospitals with more than 70 percent of the survey's healthcare participants identifying this as their chosen endpoint strategy. Strong authentication (70 percent) and single sign-on (50 percent) are also being widely adopted. Polled about their main reasons for deploying virtual desktops, hospital IT leaders cited desktop roaming across shared workstations, as well as other factors including remote access and desktop manageability.