Dell Streak and Accessories, from Dell.com
The Dell Streak was always an odd fit for the consumer market — smaller than other tablets, bigger than other smartphones. But Dell sees a bright future for it in enterprise in general, and medicine in particular.
Dell’s Jamie Coffin and Scott Jenkins recently mapped their healthcare strategy for ZDNet. Because Dell healthcare services already provides IT infrastructure for over 350 hospitals, they can integrate their portable devices and software with the systems already in place — an advantage Apple, Samsung, and other tablet makers can’t match.
Devices that store and handle medical information have to fulfill a very strict set of requirements. Besides hooking into a hospital or healthcare network’s systems, there’s HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, a 1996 law that protects patient privacy.
There are also security nightmares whenever a device storing confidential information is lost or networked communications are transferred without encryption or or other security protections. Finally, medical devices have to be rugged, germ-resistant, and capable of working in disaster scenarios without ready access to electricity or a data network. This is one significant reason why hospitals’ information systems frequently seem so low-tech; it’s not recalcitrance, but redundancy by design.
For these reasons, medical devices are usually provided by specialized providers who can meet these requirements. They’re typically expensive, with patents or scarcity preventing competition, and UI is (ahem) not particularly a priority. Consumer devices, on the other hand, can beat specialized devices on price and usability. Dell thinks that they can leverage their consumer and enterprise positions to offer the best of both worlds.
Also, it really is just the right size for a lab coat pocket.
Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences [Dell]
Dell’s enterprise Streak plan: Target verticals like healthcare [ZDNet]
Dell Streak may soon be streaking into lab coat pockets [TeleRead]
See Also:
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