Having become the world’s largest chipmaker and being capable of developing not only microprocessors for personal computers, Intel Corp. is looking forward to create enter new markets and business. One of the latest efforts of the company is to address the market of healthcare equipment. The corner-stone of Intel’s strategy is to offer certain standards for medial gear, but some healthcare specialists are not sure that this will work.

“It would reduce the costs of healthcare substantially if we produced things to standard,” said Paul Otellini, who became Intel’s chief executive in May, 2005.

Intel Wants to Standardize Healthcare Equipment

In an interview with Financial Times news-paper, Mr. Otellini indicated that we was in talks with “hundreds” of medical device manufacturers, including some of the world’s most influential, in order to initiate development of standards for medical equipment. The new Intel chief wants to ensure that electronic medical equipment is inter-operable, with standard plugs and connectors, which will make it possible for Intel and its allies to mass produce components for such equipment and will eventually make the appropriate devices more affordable.

While Intel has been pretty successful in the market of personal computers, it may take it very long to penetrate the market of medical equipment.

“Intel will need to realise that there are a certain number of incumbents who will not react positively if a newcomer steps up and says they know better,” said Hans-Peter Bursig, secretary-general of the European coordination committee of the radiological and electromagnetical industries.

Currently the healthcare industry is the industry that is the least penetrated by information technology, which may be the reason why certain companies may be an indicator of pretty conservative approach of the healthcare businesses in general. But, in fact, Intel’s plans for the digital health division are still at an early stage: no working groups have yet been set up to discuss standards and even once these are in place, it could take several years to reach agreement, the news-paper notes.

Not Only Intel…

Early this year Intel formed its so-called digital health droup, led by Louis Burns, which will develop products and explore business opportunities for Intel architecture products in healthcare research, diagnostics and productivity, as well as personal healthcare. The business reason for establishing such a division is clear: a lot of countries spend 25% - 30% of their GDP on healthcare.

Not only Intel understands that there is need for standardization in the health-care market. There are already standards initiatives underway – such as the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) committee – and many feel Intel would be intruding.

Not only Intel, among the top technology companies, wants to offer its technological achievements to save people’s lives. Earlier this year graphics company NVIDIA Corp. said that its Quadro FX 4000 professional graphics card is used in with GPeXpress 4000 graphics system utilized for digital breast tomosynthesis, a method for detecting breast cancer. IBM and Mercury Computer Systems are also working together to build medical applications based on IBM Cell microprocessor.