#7: Microsoft’s partner opportunity transforming healthcare.

The “Digital Transformation” is having a profound effect across healthcare. Companies like Microsoft are advancing their investments in the Healthcare IT market to meet the growing demand. Specific areas of focus include: patient care, empowering care teams, optimizing operational effectiveness and transforming the care continuum.

Gartner reports, “digital healthcare is propelling spending in enhancing core automation systems such as various health information systems and other associated technologies such as information exchanges and analytics that help derive meaningful use from these core systems.”

The opportunity in healthcare for partners is immense,  so I asked a former colleague Bill Hawkins to guide our audience of listeners through it.

Bill Hawkins is Microsoft’s Partner Lead for US Healthcare, where he is responsible for setting the strategy for partners engaging with Microsoft’s field sales organization focused on US Healthcare. His work is focused on the company’s Core Priorities and driving mutually beneficial outcomes. Bill works closely with partners across the healthcare ecosystem to accelerate their growth, solve for customer’s business needs, and continuously search for innovative solutions.

In the first portion of the interview Bill outlines the transformation going on in the Healthcare business and the role of IT Solution Partners in solving for these issues and areas. Specifically we discuss the shift from “healthcare enterprise” to a “consumer-focus” and “outcomes focused” model. This shift creates massive amounts of data. Managing, securing, sharing and protecting the data is key to improving and ensuring the best possible patient outcomes. This is the new reality.

As the conversation advances, we peel back on the opportunity for partners and focus on Microsoft’s technologies and properties that help drive these outcomes. Listeners can go to Microsoft’s Healthcare page here to learn more about Microsoft’s Health Vision and focus areas, view case studies and read timely blog posts.

The Healthcare team will also be engaging with partners at Microsoft’s Annual Partner Conference, formerly know as Worldwide Partner Conference and now call Microsoft Inspire – July 9th – 13th in Washington, DC.

As I do with each of the podcasts, I focused the last segment of our interview on Bill’s career and professional journey. Bill shared some of his philosophy and we had a great discussion about one of his role models, John Wooden. One of Bill’s favorite books on Wooden is Wooden by Coach John Wooden with Steve Jamison. And Bill talked about John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, which you can download in PDF format here.

After the interview Bill recommended another book for our listeners David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.

Bill can be reached at: billhawk@microsoft.com.

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