Skip to main content
Subscribe
  • Sign Up Free
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Current News
    • Providers
    • Insurance
    • Government
    • Finance
    • Technology
    • Safety & Quality
    • Digital Health
    • Transformation
    • ESG
    • People
    • Regional News
    • Digital Edition (Web Version)
    • Patients
    • Operations
    • Care Delivery
    • Payment
    • Midwest
    • Northeast
    • South
    • West
  • Opinion
    • Bold Moves
    • Breaking Bias
    • Commentaries
    • Letters
    • Vital Signs Blog
    • From the Editor
  • Events & Awards
    • Awards
    • Conferences
    • Galas
    • Virtual Briefings
    • Webinars
    • Nominate/Eligibility
    • 100 Most Influential People
    • 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives
    • Best Places to Work in Healthcare
    • Excellence in Governance
    • Health Care Hall of Fame
    • Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards
    • Top 25 Emerging Leaders
    • Top Innovators
    • Diversity in Healthcare
      • - Luminaries
      • - Top 25 Diversity Leaders
      • - Leaders to Watch
    • Women in Healthcare
      • - Luminaries
      • - Top 25 Women Leaders
      • - Women to Watch
    • Digital Health Transformation Summit
    • ESG: The Implementation Imperative Summit
    • Leadership Symposium
    • Social Determinants of Health Symposium
    • Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference
    • Best Places to Work Awards Gala
    • Health Care Hall of Fame Gala
    • Top 25 Diversity Leaders Gala
    • Top 25 Women Leaders Gala
    • - Hospital of the Future
    • - Value Based Care
    • - Hospital at Home
    • - Workplace of the Future
    • - Digital Health
    • - Future of Staffing
    • - Hospital of the Future (Fall)
  • Multimedia
    • Podcast - Beyond the Byline
    • Sponsored Podcast - Healthcare Insider
    • Video Series - The Check Up
    • Sponsored Video Series - One on One
  • Data Center
    • Data Center Home
    • Hospital Financials
    • Staffing & Compensation
    • Quality & Safety
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Data Archive
    • Resource Guide: By the Numbers
    • Surveys
    • Data Points
  • Newsletters
  • MORE+
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Media Kit
    • Jobs
    • People on the Move
    • Reprints & Licensing
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. Technology
October 28, 2014 01:00 AM

A newly aggressive Salesforce invades the health IT battlefield

Joseph Conn
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Reprints Print

    Salesforce.com, the cloud-based customer resource management services provider, has been generating buzz lately because of a reported big push into healthcare.

    Two unnamed company sources recently told Reuters that Salesforce hopes to bring in $1 billion in annual healthcare industry sales in the coming years.

    That would mean a 25% bump to its top line, based on last year's numbers.

    What's not so well-known is that Salesforce already is in healthcare. That makes this latest move more an expansion than a new initiative, as the Reuters story seemed to imply.

    Salesforce already is “absolutely in healthcare, but I think quite possibly the healthcare community doesn't know much about Salesforce,” said Tim Pletcher, CEO of the Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services based in East Lansing, a Salesforce customer for the past four years. “They've crept in through the sales and marketing and the CRM (customer relationship management) space. But I think a better way to say it is they're moving into the healthcare-delivery space.”

    MiHIN looked to the Salesforce cloud platform to build a directory it uses to keep track of and understand the relationships between 275,000 doctors, hospitals and other healthcare organizations and facilities.

    In June, Salesforce announced a partnership with Dutch electronics giant Philips, a maker of consumer-oriented health monitoring devices, to provide a cloud platform for data storage and retrieval from those devices.

    Salesforce posted revenues of $4.07 billion for its fiscal year ending Jan 31, 2014, up more than 33% from $3.05 billion a year earlier. Meanwhile, it incurred a net loss of nearly $232.2 million last year and $270.4 million the year before that.

    Red ink notwithstanding, Salesforce is “arguably the leading cloud computing company out there,” said Jack Andrews, a senior research analyst with D.A. Davidson, a financial services company based in Great Falls, Mont., who tracks the company. Salesforce has “plenty of cash” and is executing its strategy announced earlier to move into larger corporations in six industries to try and maintain sales growth, Andrews said. “Healthcare is just one of their areas of focus,” he said.

    If Salesforce is to succeed in grabbing market share in healthcare delivery, it will need stamina as well as innovative products, said Todd Cozzens, venture partner and senior adviser to Menlo Park, Calif.-based Sequoia Partners.

    “There is a long, tattered history of these software companies getting into healthcare and finding out how hard it is and getting out,” Cozzens said. “You saw GE with the IDX thing, and now they're out. Google tried to get in with their personal health record, and got out. You saw Microsoft with their personal health thing,” which is still operating as HealthVault, but not setting the world afire.

    “People don't realize, first of all, you have 47 regulatory bodies in healthcare and extremely long sales cycles for providers and payers,” Cozzens said. “To build up a code base that works, it's taken Cerner and Epic 25 to 30 years.”

    But one thing going for Salesforce is that healthcare's historical, visceral anxiety about cloud computing appears to be waning.

    One reason for that growing sense of ease with the cloud is healthcare IT people themselves who use cloud-based mobile applications in their private lives.

    A survey by the Pew Research Center Internet Project this year of 1,600 technology experts found a majority of respondents felt that the dominance of cloud-based applications and devices was inevitable, and that by 2025, there will be a “global, immersive, invisible, ambient networked computing environment built through the continued proliferation of smart sensors, cameras, software, databases, and massive data centers in a world-spanning information fabric.”

    Already, mobile medical applications have grown in popularity among clinicians and could be in ubiquitous clinical use within five years, according to Modern Healthcare's annual survey for the Most Important Mobile Medical Application, now underway and in its third year.

    And the federal government seems poised for change as it looks into a new architecture for health information interoperability modeled on Internet principles.

    With healthcare reform, Pletcher said the timing is right for Salesforce to expand into services in healthcare delivery.

    “Anyone who has recently formed an ACO and has a spreadsheet and is trying to figure out which doctor is in the club, and is trying to keep that spreadsheet up to date, they're going to go quickly to Salesforce,” Pletcher said. “There are no tools within the walls of a healthcare organization that do that well. Even care-coordination applications, there is no market leader. That space is primed for a mature tool that is good at that stuff, relationship management.”

    Cozzens notes that hospitals are wearying of being data-center owners/operators, so arguments for the economy of scale of cloud-based computing are finally gaining a healthcare audience.

    In addition, Salesforce's expertise in customer management “should translate well into patient-centered healthcare,” Cozzens said, “but they have to be patient and get on board healthcare experts who know this thing inside out. This is a 15-plus-year game for anybody coming in,” Cozzens said.

    Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn

    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Send us a letter

    Have an opinion about this story? Click here to submit a Letter to the Editor, and we may publish it in print.

    Recommended for You
    Chat-GPT-healthcare-2.png
    Why Boston Children's wants to hire a ChatGPT expert
    Screen Shot 2018-12-19 at 1.36.49 PM.png
    GE HealthCare stock drops despite revenue growth
    Most Popular
    1
    More healthcare organizations at risk of credit default, Moody's says
    2
    Centene fills out senior executive team with new president, COO
    3
    SCAN, CareOregon plan to merge into the HealthRight Group
    4
    Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan unveils big push that lets physicians take on risk, reap rewards
    5
    Bright Health weighs reverse stock split as delisting looms
    Sponsored Content
    Health IT Strategist (HITS) Newsletter: Sign up for the latest IT and medical technology news delivered 3 days a week (M, W, F).
     
    Get Newsletters

    Sign up for enewsletters and alerts to receive breaking news and in-depth coverage of healthcare events and trends, as they happen, right to your inbox.

    Subscribe Today
    MH Magazine Cover

    MH magazine offers content that sheds light on healthcare leaders’ complex choices and touch points—from strategy, governance, leadership development and finance to operations, clinical care, and marketing.

    Subscribe
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • RSS

    Our Mission

    Modern Healthcare empowers industry leaders to succeed by providing unbiased reporting of the news, insights, analysis and data.

    Contact Us

    (877) 812-1581

    Email us

     

    Resources
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise with Us
    • Ad Choices Ad Choices
    • Sitemap
    Editorial Dept
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Code of Ethics
    • Awards
    • About Us
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Modern Healthcare
    Copyright © 1996-2023. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Current News
      • Providers
      • Insurance
      • Government
      • Finance
      • Technology
      • Safety & Quality
      • Digital Health
      • Transformation
        • Patients
        • Operations
        • Care Delivery
        • Payment
      • ESG
      • People
      • Regional News
        • Midwest
        • Northeast
        • South
        • West
      • Digital Edition (Web Version)
    • Opinion
      • Bold Moves
      • Breaking Bias
      • Commentaries
      • Letters
      • Vital Signs Blog
      • From the Editor
    • Events & Awards
      • Awards
        • Nominate/Eligibility
        • 100 Most Influential People
        • 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives
        • Best Places to Work in Healthcare
        • Excellence in Governance
        • Health Care Hall of Fame
        • Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards
        • Top 25 Emerging Leaders
        • Top Innovators
        • Diversity in Healthcare
          • - Luminaries
          • - Top 25 Diversity Leaders
          • - Leaders to Watch
        • Women in Healthcare
          • - Luminaries
          • - Top 25 Women Leaders
          • - Women to Watch
      • Conferences
        • Digital Health Transformation Summit
        • ESG: The Implementation Imperative Summit
        • Leadership Symposium
        • Social Determinants of Health Symposium
        • Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference
      • Galas
        • Best Places to Work Awards Gala
        • Health Care Hall of Fame Gala
        • Top 25 Diversity Leaders Gala
        • Top 25 Women Leaders Gala
      • Virtual Briefings
        • - Hospital of the Future
        • - Value Based Care
        • - Hospital at Home
        • - Workplace of the Future
        • - Digital Health
        • - Future of Staffing
        • - Hospital of the Future (Fall)
      • Webinars
    • Multimedia
      • Podcast - Beyond the Byline
      • Sponsored Podcast - Healthcare Insider
      • Video Series - The Check Up
      • Sponsored Video Series - One on One
    • Data Center
      • Data Center Home
      • Hospital Financials
      • Staffing & Compensation
      • Quality & Safety
      • Mergers & Acquisitions
      • Data Archive
      • Resource Guide: By the Numbers
      • Surveys
      • Data Points
    • Newsletters
    • MORE+
      • Contact Us
      • Advertise
      • Media Kit
      • Jobs
      • People on the Move
      • Reprints & Licensing