With the market for healthcare IT-related products growing faster than ever and evolving constantly, it can be a dizzying task to keep track of what's out there. So Tech Data, one the largest distributors of technology products – serving more than 125,000 IT resellers around the world – has offered to send its resale customers to "med school" at the new Healthcare IT Pavilion: a simulated doctor’s office located in the distributor’s 6,000-square-foot Clearwater technology solutions center.
The facility boasts a broad array of IT used in medical facilities of all sizes, from EHR and practice management software to products related to document imaging, networking, mobility, storage, video surveillance, video conferencing, unified communications, digital signage and specialized accessories – "all the things you're starting to see when you go into the doctor's now," says Barb Miller, vice president, services at Tech Data.
"Our customers seemed to be very interested in healthcare once President Obama announced the stimulus," says Miller. And with the president "pushing interconnectivity of everything for healthcare," she says, more and more realized that health IT was going to be a long-term – and lucrative – concern.
"As our customers started asking us how do they play, we decided that we better help them figure out how do they play. In fact it's been a great year. Fantastic. Better than we could have ever imagined in growth of knowledge, expertise, and in interest from our customers. I haven't seen anything like this, and I've been in the IT world for 25 years."
Resellers face a couple big challenges when building healthcare IT businesses, says Miller. First, they must gain an understanding of the particular operational challenges faced by providers, and understand how – and what – IT can best help. Second, they must familiarize themselves with an array of complex and specialized solutions with which many resellers have little experience. "The field is so large, and there are so many ways to specialize, that I'm not sure one reseller can learn everything," says Miller.
The Healthcare IT Pavilion aims to engage industry experts and show those technologies at use. It features two exam rooms, a consultation room, a waiting room, reception desk and office-management area. They're all filled with a profusion of IT solutions – from vendors such as Fujitsu, gloStream, Greenway, HP, Panasonic, Sage, Sony and VMware – that would be deployed throughout a doctor’s office.
Innovations on display include EHRs; practice management systems; PC carts, tablet PCs, and ruggedized handhelds; imaging technology; unified communications and video conferencing solutions; security, such as biometrics, network security and video surveillance; and niche accessories such as antimicrobial mouse pads, washable keyboards, mounts and other specialized products.
Members of Tech Data’s TechMed Alliance – which serves resellers interested in growing their healthcare IT businesses – can immediately reserve the Healthcare IT Pavilion for private tours and trainings. (Also, "if the reseller can't come here with their customers they can get online and view it remotely," says Miller.)
The Pavilion also serves to educate the firm's "broader, traditional sales team, so other customers, who are not Tech Med alliance customers, can call the sales team and learn more about various healthcare solutions," says Jarred LeFebvre, Tech Data's public relations manager.
"Year-over-year growth, based on our work in educating our resellers, has borne out the fact that if you teach them, they can sell the product," says Miller.
“It’s fun for us,” she adds, “because there's always something new to sell."
