EMC, wireless heavyweight Qualcomm, and software behemoth Microsoft are targeting the healthcare sector as major part of their growth strategies.
Back to our aversion to rigid categorization, we fully recognize that the “Health IT” moniker imperfectly represents the industry terrain we’re covering with our new channel. When some people hear “health IT,” they think of companies that sell software to hospitals or other healthcare customers. While that’s definitely part of what we’re covering here, the channel will also include coverage of companies that are pioneering new uses of technology and melding innovations from multiple disciplines to improve healthcare—not just the treatment of illness but the promotion and continuation of wellness. Think about how iRobot and members of the MIT Media Lab are developing robotics to help patients live healthier lives, how companies are finding synergies in the semiconductor and molecular biology fields to develop faster and cheaper methods to sequence DNA, and how firms are embedding microprocessors into drugs and devices to improve their functionality. You’ll find all of those types of stories on this channel.
Indeed, the cross-disciplinary nature of health IT makes it a great fit for Xconomy and the life sciences and technology innovators we serve. Health IT brings together, say, veteran biotech executives who speak FDA jargon and engineers who build robust and secure databases. Likewise, this channel is tapping the experience of the Xconomy editorial staff, which includes great tech writers like chief correspondent Wade Roush in Boston and our national biotech editor, Luke Timmerman, in Seattle. They and other members of our staff understand the technology and healthcare industries, and we’re all looking forward to collaborating on making the Health IT Channel an especially useful resource to our readers. We’re also encouraging those readers to share their ideas about stories and health apps that they would like to see featured. In fact, the channel itself is very much a product of the feedback we have received from our readers and supporters, many of whom felt that health IT coverage needed to have its own home at Xconomy. Now it does!
