Interesting data from Global Industry Analysts today. According to the research firm, electronic medical records (EMR) will comprise a $5.4 billion market in North America by 2015. In Europe, that number is $1.4 billion.

Why does it matter? Obviously, updating hospitals and healthcare concerns to handle the data will be an IT-intensive effort, which might also prove to be a boon for SaaS providers and cloud computing firms that already know (or should know) a thing or two about running energy efficient data centers. The best part? Hospitals and doctor’s offices stand to save a ton on paper, not just buying it, but also filing it, storing it, and eventually disposing of it.

According to the press release, below are some of the firms to watch for as the market racks up those billions. (Note the healthy sprinkling of IT companies.)

Key players profiled in the report include Agfa-Gevaert Ltd, Ascribe plc, Cambio Healthcare Systems, Cerner Corporation, CompuGROUP HOLDING AG, Computer Programs and Systems, Inc, EBIT AET S.p.A., Eclipsys Corporation, Egton Medical Information Systems Limited, Epic Systems Corporation, GE Healthcare, Hewlett Packard Company, IBA Health (Europe) Ltd, IMS MAXIMS plc, Indra Sistemas SA, iSoft Group plc, McKesson Corporation, MDS Medical Software, MedPlus, Inc, Medical Information Technology, Inc, Medasys SA, Nexus AG, Noemalife SpA, Profdoc AB, QuadraMed Corporation, SAP (UK) Limited, Siemens Medical Solutions GSD GmbH, and System C Healthcare plc, among others.

It will be interesting to see if the estimates change if and when healthcare legislation wends its way through Congress and whether records portability finally takes off.

Image Credit: Flickr user virtualis – CC