23 Nov 2005 - IBM shareholders undoubtedly want to understand why IBM is pursuing the healthcare sector as one of its strategic areas for growth, and why we expect to succeed
- Change is Here Every year, America spends $1.9 trillion on healthcare, yet the sector makes up less than 2% of what the U.S. spends on information technologies. This situation is poised to change because there is strong political will, in both the public and private sectors tame to healthcare inflation. Moreover, there is broad consensus that more efficient and sophisticated deployment of healthcare IT is the most readily available way to achieve this objective around the globe. Indeed, emerging markets have an equally great need to modernize their entire healthcare infrastructures and industries.
- A Major Market Opportunity The healthcare sector is one of IBM’s biggest opportunity to grow its business worldwide. Even a modest increase in healthcare IT allocation will translate into a hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue potential.
- Ideal For IBM IBM is particularly well positioned to win a major portion of this new business. We already work with the entire healthcare ecosystem in thousands of ways and with a large array of partners. Moreover, we are building many of the key infrastructure innovations that will enable deep integration of data and services that will redefine healthcare.
- Better for Our Business Healthcare transformation is essential for the productivity of our own workforce: IBM spends approximately $2 billion annually to provide our employees and their dependents with access to healthcare, with approximately $1.3 billion spent in the United States alone. Many of the innovations we are helping our clients and partners implement, including better systems for managing healthcare services, benefit us as global enterprise.
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