In a vendor-conducted survey published on Tuesday, ICD-10 resides near the head of healthcare IT shops' to-do list for the next year.

Embarcadero Technologies shared its study results and, not entirely surprisingly, ICD-10 ranked fourth, following EHRs, datawarehouses, and HIEs (Health Information Exchanges). Trailing ICD-10 are models for HL7 and cybersecurity.

Security sitting in the lower reaches of such a list might be a mystery were this survey not conducted by a vendor. Embarcadero makes database tools, after all, which also explains why data warehousing was the second priority. As Healthcare IT News' Molly Merrill points out in this article, the study  represents Embarcadero’s contacts, including developers, DBAs, architects, consultants, executives.

[Related: Top 3 understated aspects of ICD-10 and 3 of the many ways ICD-10 will permeate your health IT.]

In other words: a broader survey might find security higher up the list and data warehousing further down. Regardless, for ICD10Watch readers, the most important finding is that migration to the new code sets ranks alongside the top projects, even among database-centric professionals. 

That's not to say that ICD-10 projects are as commonly underway as the EHR and HIE brethren. Rather, Embarcadero found that nearly 60 percent of respondents have started EHR work, while 74 percent understand Meaningful Use enough to be comfortable with the existing information. As a point of contrast, HIMSS most recent readiness survey for HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10 found that fewer than 15 percent of respondents have formally kicked off those initiatives.

Embarcadero's Healthcare Data Management Survey was conducted throughout the months of March and April 2010, during which time 111 IT professionals participated.