Many VARs still sell into hospitals the same way: lead with the device, talk specs, wait on IT. That play is getting weaker.
BlueStar’s survey of 100 healthcare executives suggests hospital buyers are thinking less about standalone hardware and more about what slows rollout, adds risk, and breaks workflows. For VARs, that changes where the real opportunity is.
Thanks to Honeywell for sponsoring this survey and to our friends at VDC Research for helping us gather the data!
5 fast takeaways
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The most commercially important finding is this: when hospital technology fails to expand beyond a single department, the top reason is IT capacity and support constraints, cited by 37% of respondents. Not failed pilots. Not lack of interest. Not even budget first.
In many accounts, the technology already worked. The department approved it. The use case was proven. Then, the rollout stalled because the hospital lacked the bandwidth to scale it. Other blockers tell the same story: budget ambiguity (19%), clinical adoption and training challenges (18%), governance complexity (12%), and unclear ROI (11%).
For VARs, this is the opportunity hiding in plain sight: not just selling new products, but helping hospitals extend what they already bought.
The report’s biggest surprise may be that cybersecurity and data privacy risk ranked as the top challenge for 2026 at 39%, ahead of financial pressure and integration concerns.
That should change how healthcare VARs frame mobility, scanning, and AutoID conversations. Hospitals are not just evaluating device performance. They are also thinking about authentication, remote management, endpoint exposure, and what happens when shared clinical devices are lost or misused.
If your pitch is still centered on hardware specs alone, you may be skipping part of the buying criteria.
SPONSORED MESSAGE
Seventy-eight percent of hospitals share devices across staff rather than assigning them 1:1. In those environments, the pain points are highly consistent: 55% say devices are not available when needed, 43% say batteries are not charged, 40% cite cleaning and hand-off gaps, 36% say devices are misplaced or hard to locate, and 35% report login and profile issues.
This is not background noise. It is workflow drag. The report also notes the physical realities that make matters worse: frequent exposure to disinfectants, battery limitations, drops, wear, and gloved use.
In other words, the hospital device environment is hard on both hardware and users.
When scanning and identification technology fails, hospitals do not stop and wait. They improvise. The most common response is a manual workaround at 41%, followed by task delays at 18%, staff judgment at 18%, escalation at 17%, and, in some cases, bypassing the step entirely at 6%.
And this is happening in some of the most sensitive workflows: medication administration (63%), patient identification (59%), inventory replenishment (50%), specimen handling (40%), and compliance and documentation (35%).
That gives VARs a more serious conversation to lead. Scanner downtime is not just a device issue. In the wrong workflow, it becomes a patient-safety, compliance, and operational-continuity issue.
The report shows clear intent in the market. Ninety-one percent of healthcare executives expect to revisit or upgrade scanning and identification technology within 24 months, and 39% expect to do so within 12 months.
But these are not one-contact, one-department deals. IT/Informatics initiates scanning and ID improvements 57% of the time, the CIO has final approval 41% of the time, and the IT budget is the most common funding source at 44%. Approval also comes from the executive committee at 28% and COO or operations leadership at 19%.
That means the real buying group usually has three parts: the IT quarterback, the operations co-sponsor, and the clinical validator.
Hospitals do not just need products. They need packaged answers to recurring operational problems. The strongest offers reduce friction, improve visibility, and make rollout easier.
| Bundle | Where it fits | What to include |
|---|---|---|
| Always-Ready Clinical Mobility | For shared-device environments where availability, charging, and login friction slow the shift. | Include smart charging, MDM, secure login, device tracking, and lifecycle services. |
| Inventory Visibility Foundation | For hospitals dealing with stockouts, poor real-time visibility, and manual counts. | Include barcode scanning, mobile computers, inventory software, dashboards, and integration to ERP, EHR, pharmacy, and OR systems. |
| Mobile Equipment Tracking | For hospitals wasting time locating pumps, carts, scanners, and other mobile assets. | Include RFID, RTLS, or BLE, plus tracking software, dashboards, utilization reporting, and loss reporting. |
| Medication + Patient ID Reliability | For workflows where downtime exposes patient safety and compliance. | Include clinical-grade scanners, wristband and label printing, device health monitoring, charging redundancy, and workflow validation. |
| Rollout + Expansion Enablement | For hospitals where a pilot succeeded, but broader deployment stalled. | Include rollout planning, integration help, training, KPI dashboards, ROI support, and site-by-site deployment services. |
Hospitals are still buying scanners, tablets, and AutoID infrastructure. But that is not the whole sale.
They are also buying fewer workarounds, less friction, better device availability, better visibility, and more confidence that a successful pilot can actually scale.
The VARs with the strongest position in this market will do three things well: broaden the conversation beyond device specs, package solutions around workflow problems, and treat rollout support as a real offer rather than an afterthought.