Salesforce Plans to Sell Cloud Services to the Healthcare Industry

Due to a $200 million dollar donation from Marc and Lynn Bennioff, (Marc Bennioff is CEO of Salesforce.com), Benioff Children’s hospital will open in San Francisco in less than four months. Since 2010, the couple has been working on this project with the University of California at San Francisco.

Recently, Benioff announced his company’s plans to sell cloud services to the healthcare industry. Salesforce.com believes that this initiative could be its next $1 billion idea. Healthcare software is very lucrative, as it is expected that by 2017, hospitals, doctors’ offices, etc. will spend $31.3 billion on technology.

Nonetheless, privacy laws, especially the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), prevent Salesforce.com from buying any old cloud service to store documents, chat or send data to their mobile devices. Cloud services must be certified with special security controls and obtain governmental approval.

Benioff Children’s Hospital will be the first to use the new app called CareWeb Messenger (created by Salesforce.com), which will permit doctors, nurses and patients to communicate on mobile devices.

Salesforce.com may be able to get involved in the electronic healthcare records business, in competition with Microsoft and Oracle. It will also try to get into the field of consumer healthcare apps that are outfitted with sensors. In April, Salesforce.com announced their partnership with Philips that will ultimately allow caregivers to monitor their patients with chronic conditions outside of the hospital.

Summary by MedicalGroups.com

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