I know a lot of folks here at Dell believe technology can make a real impact in health care by improving the quality and efficiency of patient care. It's estimated that in one year avoidable medical errors led to 98,000 deaths—more than from AIDS, homicides, and car crashes combined.  Initiatives like electronic prescriptions and health records can make a tremendous impact on reducing medical errors and streamlining how patient information is recorded, tracked and shared.

That's one reason Dell joined the National E-Prescribing Safety Initiative last year. Lead by Allscripts, NEPSI is a coalition of organizations that can each play a role in resolving the current crisis in preventable medication errors. The goal of NEPSI is to increase patient safety by making electronic prescribing software accessible to all physicians and medication prescribers by providing it free of charge.

This is one piece of the puzzle on how best to infuse technology into health care for the benefit of patients. But there are many challenges ranging from managing the explosion of data in health care to the lack of standards across devices and applications to building interconnectivity among hospitals, physicians, payers, device makers, and pharmaceutical companies. These are all issues Dell and its Health Care and Life Sciences team is working with customers to address.

To learn more about these issues, take a look at the vlog below with Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman. This is the first in a series of three interviews with Glen that will run on Direct2Dell, discussing technology and health care.