Dell: A Multi-Billion Dollar Technology Start Up

Dell World Has a Strong Healthcare Focus

I attended the 2013 Dell World Conference at the Austin Convention Center this past December. It was very interesting especially in light of Dell going private shortly before the event. During his keynote Michael Dell gave attendees a glimpse into his plans to catch up with the cloud and reinvent the firm he started years ago right up the road from where we met. Dell also announced a $300 million Strategic Innovation Venture Fund that extends its existing $60 million Fluid Data Storage Fund to cloud computing, Big Data and mobility. Startups in these areas now have a shot at funding, channel resources and go-to-market know-how from one the world’s largest technology companies. With its funds, Dell is making investments with other venture capitalists and strategic investors and acts as a board advisor and resource for the companies. These resources could be technical, business counsel or market strategy assistance.

Highlights from Dell World Opening Keynotes


Many of the Dell World sessions with a healthcare focus were centered around cloud strategies and storage solutions, as well as touch enabled devices. Below August Calhoun, Vice President and General Manager, Healthcare and Life Sciences at Dell, outlines the three priorities for Dell's healthcare efforts including:

1. Private or Hybrid cloud solutions which are HIPAA certified
2. Big data, including storage and data warehouse solutions
3. Touch enabled solutions in partnership with Microsoft and Intel

I also spoke with Sid Nair, Vice President & Global General Manager, Healthcare & Life Sciences at Dell Services, for his perspective working in Dell Services on what he sees in store for this next year. He brought the following issues into focus:

1. Compliance and regulatory issues
2. Optimization and integration
3. Analytics

It will be very interesting to see how Dell continues to position itself in the rapidly evolving healthcare marketplace. During a video testimony at Dell World, Tenet Healthcare Corporation gave some glowing feedback on their over 20 year relationship. It was noted that the single biggest check Tenet writes each year is to Dell, primarily due to the IT services contract Dell inherited when it acquired Perot Systems. Last year Tenet's subsidiary Conifer Health Solutions also acquired Dell's Revenue Cycle Solutions line of business for hospitals and healthcare systems. This acquisition increased the annual patient revenue Conifer manages for its client hospitals to over $21 billion. There were a great many sessions as well as solutions on the exhibit hall floor they were geared towards healthcare. One of the best was a panel moderated by Dr. Andy Litt, Chief Medical Officer of Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences which you can view HERE (free registration required).

Dell Hosts Thought Leaders in Healthcare Think Tank

In 2012 an intimate group of healthcare IT experts gathered at the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas for an evening of listening, collaboration and discussion about the challenges and opportunities that matter most to the healthcare IT industry. Then again in 2013 Dell hosted the second healthcare think tank, "The future of information-driven healthcare." These events were shared over a livestream broadcast where participants could attend virtually and submit comments and questions using the #DoMoreHIT hashtag on Twitter. Now this year, we are at it again with "At the Crossroads: Technology and Transformation in Healthcare."

This time it is being held a few weeks after HIMSS in order for everyone to take a breath and digest the high points of conference. We will again be  using the #DoMoreHIT hashtag and it will be broadcast on Livestream HERE.

This year we will focus on three broad topics, The Connected World, Aligning the Players, and Analytics to Drive Change, but we will not be constrained and I expect some great discussion since we have some pretty smart people in the room. Participants to the roundtable discussion will include:

Dan Munro - Contributor, Forbes @DanMunro
Drex Deford - CEO, Next Wave Connect @DrexDeford
Janet Marchibroda - Director, Health Innovation Initiative, Bipartisan Policy Center @BPC_Bipartisan
John Lynn - Founder, HealthcareScene.com @TechGuy
Dr. Joseph Kim - Chief Editor, Medicine and Technology.com @DrJosephKim
Dr. Wen Dombrowski - Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO), VNA Health Group @HealthcareWen
Kevin Riley - President, Kevin Riley & Associates | modelH @KevineRiley
Nora Belcher - Executive Director, Texas e-Health Alliance @NoraBelcher
Shahid Shah - Chairman, HealthIMPACT @ShahidNShah
August Calhoun, Ph.D. – VP/General Manager, Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences - @AugustCalhoun
Sid Nair – Vice President/General Manager, HCLS, Dell Services - @nairsid
Andrew Litt, M.D. – Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences - @DrAndyLitt

The Healthcare Revolution Away From the Mainframe

Over ten years ago Intel launched the Proactive Health Research Project, a multiyear effort to bring ubiquitous computing to eldercare. Since that time Eric Dishman, an Intel Fellow and now general manager of the Health Strategy & Solutions Group, has been promoting healthcare innovation with a specific emphasis on home and community-based technologies and services for chronic disease management and independent living. He has often expanded on the concept initially proposed by Andy Grove in Fortune magazine where he described the "mainframe" era of healthcare. He said at the time, "It took us 50 years to move from the mainframe to personal computing, but health care needs to go through a similar transformation in ten years or less."

I riffed off of this a bit at the recent Dell Healthcare Think Tank entitled "The Future of Information Driven Healthcare," where I also described the launch of the HIMSS project within the Clinton Global Initiative, the Healthcare Transformation Project. With cloud services, mobile health technology and telemedicine advances, we may just be seeing a similar revolution in healthcare that the computer industry underwent. I think the Healthcare Transformation Project will help to spur this revolution...



Here is a TED Talk of Eric's where he discusses some of the ideas I referenced: