The task of seizing these opportunities will have to include hiring a lot of Chinese programmers.
=> What's new? Pffft
The cost of creating and scaling such solutions in China, based on existing U.S. designs, will be lower than enhancing them to the next level exclusively with American help.
=> What's new? Pffft
This is what has happened in every other area of IT. Once vendors learn the language of health care, they can replace specialists at lower cost.
=> What's new? Pffft
China is giving them an incentive to do that, big contracts with which to do it, and low-cost programmers who can assure they do it.
=> What's new? Pffft
While the U.S. stimulus grows the market, China will help move the mainline vendors ahead.
And reap the profits (well, other than into the private money vaults of a few select "movers and shakers" of the decidedly multinational stripe).
=> What's new? Pffft
Hey Dana, instead of conquering abroad and enhancing Chinese (and other red) dreams, why don't all these hip "American" (ha!) corporations get to helping set things right here on the home front. They certainly engender enough clout with all the political stooges they buy and manipulate [OOPS I forgot, there no longer IS a home front! So much for chasing that much heralded "Americana dream, "now masked in ruby red.]
It could be quite a lot.
Mainline U.S. tech vendors like IBM and Dell are going all-out for China’s booming health IT market, which is expected to double in value over the next few years.
Even while U.S. health IT specialists like Cerner, McKesson and AthenaHealth obsess over that sweet, sweet stimulus cash, smart American entrepreneurs like Robert Lorsch of MMR Global are pushing heavily into the China market.
The task of seizing these opportunities will have to include hiring a lot of Chinese programmers. Even if the government there were not insisting on it, cost would drive such a move.
Taking standard offerings from U.S. companies and adapting them for the Chinese market may be job one. Job two will have to be enhancing them, making them more competitive with what U.S. programmers have been working on over the last decade.
China wants Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) for all its citizens, just as American policymakers have demanded through the HITECH Act, part of the U.S. stimulus. The cost of creating and scaling such solutions in China, based on existing U.S. designs, will be lower than enhancing them to the next level exclusively with American help.
I have written before here, several times, about how companies like IBM can be expected, over time, to take over the health IT space from specialists like Cerner. This is what has happened in every other area of IT. Once vendors learn the language of health care, they can replace specialists at lower cost.
China is giving them an incentive to do that, big contracts with which to do it, and low-cost programmers who can assure they do it.
The China opportunity will accelerate trends that were already underway. While the U.S. sstimulus grows the market, China will help move the mainline vendors ahead.
NOTE: I found this illustration from ZDNet’s Apple Core blog amusing. Mao is used today the way Americans use George Washington, as a unity symbol adaptable to any occasion. It doesn’t make them communists any more than it makes us bewigged slave owners.
