Last month, we cited a Reuters story which reported that Cisco’s healthcare unit had doubled its sales since it was created two years ago, contributing an annual revenue sum of “well over a billion dollars,” according to a Cisco healthcare exec. It probably helps that Cisco has medical professionals leading the technology charge within Cisco’s healthcare business.
The Healthcare IT News and Opinion blog has an interview with Danny Sands, assistant clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and senior medical informatics director at Cisco. Here are some of his thoughts on Cisco in healthcare:
* Healthcare companies invest just 2.5% of revenue in technology, compared to 8% to 10% of other information-intensive industries. Sands cites lack of capital to invest as a big challenge in healthcare, particularly among hospitals that are running near-negative margins.
* Cisco employs 225 people in its healthcare consulting group, which is supported by a dedicated sales team.
* Healthcare can benefit from unified communications because it enables roaming physicians and other medical staff to communicate in whatever methods they prefer – whether it be via a wireless IP phone or instant messaging.
* Sands believes home care represents one of the areas that could benefit most from IP-connected devices. Other areas include location-based services for tracking items in a hospital, and deploying wireless networks that could be accessed by longtime stay patients who are not permitted to use the hospital’s private network.
Read more about Sands’ thoughts here.
Go to Cisco Subnet for more Cisco news, blogs, discussion forums, security alerts, book giveaways, and more.
Recent Cisconet blog entries
Subscribe to Network World’s Cisco News Alert, which includes a weekly digest of all Cisco Subnet items
