Texas Shut Down For A Week, But It Was Busy For Healthcare IT

Here is the hottest news related to healthcare IT for the week.

What's up with Intelerad?

• Intelerad made three acquisitions in six months, most recently with Lumedx, leading cardiovascular information systems (CVIS). This acquisition will lead to major academic medical centers and large non-profit health systems using legacy PACS products. The timing is perfect as many organizations are at their 5-7 year lifespan with PACS and are exploring alternatives. 

• The challenge for Intelerad is will they pitch that their solutions all integrate or keep them as separate standalone.  

Jeopardy winner is shutting down.

• IBM Corp. is offloading its Watson Health healthcare technology unit, possibly through a sale or merges as part of a SPAC offering.

• This will get interesting as there are still many large corporations using Watson health. Will they look for alternative solutions?

HealthIT employment downsizing.

• Many health systems have been downsizing or outsourcing their IT workforce. This is not a trend that I like to see working in the field. The demand for talent in the marketplace is still there, in my opinion. 

Disrupting the healthcare vertical is not easy.

• Haven recently shut down, and Walmart also announced that they are slowing down their health clinic plans. It doesn't mean that they are not moving forward but taking more of a cautious approach. 

• In my opinion, Walmart should tackle it from a partnership approach where they own the physical locations while partnering with a regional health system to run the day-to-day operations as a joint venture.