VARs looking to help their customers get in on economic stimulus funds for electronic medical records will soon have yet another option open to them.

IT distributor Ingram Micro has confirmed that it will announce a partnership with a prominent EMR vendor later in November. The company says the deal is designed to help make it easier for VARs to get a piece of the EMR business that will become available as health care facilities and physicians offices become eligible for economic stimulus funds to digitize their records.

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Competitor Synnex announced a partnership with EMR vendor Allscripts in June, the first such deal to provide VARs with an easier path to offering EMRs to their heath care customers.

With offerings available through two distributors, compared with how it was six months ago there are a veritable wealth of options for VARs looking to get in on the EMR business.

Earlier in 2009 when the IT industry was in the depths of recession, the ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) still brought a glimmer of hope to most conversations about the economy and business.

But while vendors and VARs began to look at opportunities to help their customers that were eligible for such funds—particularly the estimated $17 billion that would be available for updating physician's offices and health care facilities to use EMRs—some in the industry complained of a problem.

While there were plenty of vendors that offered the technology for EMRs, VARs were having trouble finding any that were channel-friendly.

The Synnex/Allscripts deal served as a game changer for the space, letting Synnex VARs get into an EMR program just for the channel. And, again, the Ingram Micro program will be announced by the end of this month.

IDC analysts focusing on the EMR portion of the economic stimulus package have said that more EMR vendors will have to open their programs up to channel partners in order to be able to realize all the opportunity available through ARRA.