Dell acquires Perot Systems for almost $4 billion, increasing its healthcare footprint

Dell is significantly increasing its footprint in the health IT arena with its newest purchase of IT solutions provider Perot Systems for about $3.9 billion.

Dell's acquisition of Perot Systems has been approved by the boards of both companies. Perot will become Dell's services unit once Dell buys all of Perot's outstanding Class A common stock at $30 per share. It will continue to be led by its current CEO, Peter Altabef.

Dell just announced two weeks ago that it would be offering its own electronic medical records (EMR) system. Click here for more on that story.

Dell will offer EMR solutions to help doctors and hospitals make the digital transition

Dell announced this week that it is rolling out a package of hardware, software and support to help doctors and hospitals adopt electronic medical records (EMRs). EMR adoption is one of the key aims of current government health care reform initiatives, most notably the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) whose goal is to have fully electronic records for every American by 2014.

The goals of reducing costs and error in health care have been long-sought with EMRs, but so far systems have fallen short and the cost and complications around adopting electronic systems have prevented many doctors and hospitals from bothering to "upgrade" from paper records.

Dell’s EMR solution is supposed to remove these barriers from EMR adoption -- allowing either the hospital or Dell partner to host the solution, and including Dell hardware and third-party applications in one package. Providers who use this (or other) solution to transition to electronic records would be eligible under the ARRA to receive bonus payments.

Adopting EMRs is a big part of current health reform efforts, yet those who have adopted them without properly supporting them with other health IT systems have found that they are largely subject to many of the same pains experienced with paper records - human error; incomplete, inconsistent and untimely records; and lack of communication across the continuum of care.

While this is a somewhat different topic, it's worth mentioning that supporting EMRs with advanced data capture technologies to ensure that the data is accurate, reliable and timely is a worthwhile investment for those considering (or who have already adopted) electronic medical records.

For more information on automatic data capture solutions to support EMR systems, contact our RFID team, or visit our Health Care RFID Web site.