Cerner appears to garner more recognition and interest with healthcare providers outside the U.S. than any other health IT vendor, according to a new report by research firm KLAS.

For its report, "Global HIT Trends: Which Vendors are Providers Betting On?" KLAS interviewed providers around the world to better understand their EMR purchasing plans.

KLAS found Cerner is more seriously considered than any other EMR vendor across all regions interviewed. KLAS credits this to three Cerner attributes:

1. A large global footprint,
2. Strong functionality
3. Flexibility in contracting and implementation.

[See also: Epic-Cerner competition heats up.]

In the most active EMR purchasing market, the UK, Cerner also leads in total consideration at 71 percent, while Allscripts and MEDITECH had the largest year-over-year increase for being seriously considered.

Outside of the UK in mainland Europe and Ireland, providers consider Epic almost 20 percent more than any other vendor, and Epic is looked at in 73 percent of those EMR deals.

[See also: athenahealth, Cerner, Epic shine in KLAS interoperability report.]

"Providers globally are focused on adopting and upgrading EMR solutions at a higher rate than ever before," Jeremy Goff, KLAS research director, said in a news release. "Providers who are tasked with making that decision want to know which vendors are being considered most in their region."

In addition to exploring EMRs, the report also explores which imaging vendors are being considered by providers throughout the world. KLAS found that 50 percent of providers looking to implement or replace a picture archiving and communications systems, PACs, are strongly considering GE, and 44 percent are considering Carestream.

[See also: Cerner, InterSystems dominate overseas health IT markets]