Lenovo Aims To Tap Into Global Healthcare IT Boom With New Dedicated Business Unit

Lenovo said Friday that it's forming a new internal business unit dedicated to developing products and solutions for doctors, hospitals and university medical centers.

The new Lenovo health-care division, slated to launch on April 1, will include regional branches across the world, including one in North America, Chris Frey, vice president and general manager of Lenovo's North America commercial business, said in an interview.

’Lenovo has done a great job of providing technology to the healthcare market with tablets, convertibles and all-in-ones,’ Frey told CRN. "Now, with a specialized health care vertical, we see new opportunities with not only client (devices) in the front office, but now with our servers for the back office,’ he said.

Lenovo is aiming to drive new business within the booming global IT healthcare market, which is expected to reach $112.8 billion globally in 2015, according to market research firm IDC.

[Related: Lenovo's Kinlaw Promoted To North American Channel Chief ]

Lenovo's North American division will be headed by Rob Cato, who is currently executive director of distribution and VAR sales. His new title will be executive director of healthcare vertical sales for the U.S. region.

"Health care is a good avenue right now for any IT company," said Bob Venero, CEO of Holbrook, N.Y.-based solution provider Future Tech. ’If Lenovo can tweak their product line and create hardware that’s HIPAA complaint, secure enough for the market and skinned to the right form factor, I think there is a good opportunity out there for them.’

Central to Lenovo’s IT healthcare charge is a reliance on its global business partner community, Frey said. "To exploit this vertical and see the type of growth, adoption and scale Lenovo is counting on we are going to be highly dependent on our relationships with the channel," Frey said.

The market for IT healthcare spending is growing faster than the overall IT market, said John Caucis, a senior analyst at Technology Business Research who oversees public sector and health-care IT services.

New rules that make electronic health records (EHR) mandatory, along with cloud computing and the proliferation of mobile devices in healthcare, is driving 7 to 10 percent year-over-year growth in the healthcare industry, Caucis said.

"IBM, Accenture and Cognizant are market makers for health care on the software and services side," Caucis said.

For OEMs making the tablets, laptops and servers powering the back office, he said, the market is relatively up for grabs. ’Every day we are seeing more resources, dollars and mergers and acquisitions in this space. There are a lot of players chasing IT healthcare dollars right now," he said.

This isn’t Lenovo’s first attempt to get into the healthcare market. In 2011, Lenovo targeted the healthcare industry with a three-pronged strategy that included partner program incentives, training initiatives and marketing kits pre-made with medical sales materials.

At the time, however, some Lenovo partners criticized the healthcare push as focusing too much on marketing and not enough on delivering unique solutions.

In its new push into healthcare IT, Lenovo doesn't just plan to focus on current technologies, but will also "create solutions and solve problems that people in the health-care industry face every day as it relates to technology," Frey said.

Frey declined to comment on how much money and resources Lenovo is committing to the new business unit, and which partners it will work with, noting that these details will be revealed closer to the April 1 launch date.

However, Lenovo will certainly face significant competition in the health-care IT market. Apple and IBM last year announced a partnership that focuses on healthcare apps that will allow health-care workers to use iPads to connect with backend IBM cloud services. Apple also has a partnership healthcare records firm Epic, which developed EHR apps and worked with Apple on its HealthKit software platform.

In light of the competition Lenovo will be facing, at least one longtime Lenovo partner isn't optimistic about the vendor's chances.

"All of these vertical spaces are crowded, and unless Lenovo has something no one else has the market, it’s going to have a hard time battling anyone that’s already there," said the partner, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

PUBLISHED MARCH 6, 2015