Intel chief targets health industry

More IT help on the way for the Health Care industry.  I can totally agree with the comment that this is the "slowest moving industry in the world" as relates to technology, and yet the advances are so critical to better health care for all.  The bank too will soon be broken as technology continues to evolve and we are already seeing some of this with the shortage of physicians, some of which may have chosen to just bow out and retire instead of working with new methodologies.  Lack of technology and using old paper processes, which require the need for additional staff and supplies to accommodate the requirements for billing, charting and pay for performance are already taking a toll not only with efficiency, but with compensation.  The demands from insurers to receive data versus paper information is already eating a big hole in the practice budget as generating this information manually instead of using technology is becoming a major cost function and almost to the point of being prohibitive to allot staff time to dedicate to the reporting side of things, thus  compensation is at stake due to the inability to timely generate the information needed for payment in some areas, such as pay for performance.  BD 

Paul Otellini, chief executive of Intel, the world’s biggest semiconductor company, has attacked the healthcare industry for its resistance to technological change.

“It is the slowest moving industry in the world,” he told the Financial Times. “And one indicator of that is, of all the major industries in the world, it is the least penetrated by IT.”  Mr Otellini said the health sector was a “longer hike” than other Intel initiatives aimed at emerging markets and the digital home.

He sees technology helping by providing systems for people to monitor their health at home and allowing remote monitoring, diagnosis and treatment through telemedicine.

Intel has made little progress in penetrating the healthcare industry with its chips since it reorganized and created a Digital Health division in 2005.

“The current projections in healthcare will break the bank of most mature economies if we don’t do something about it,” he said.

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