“I was working on the queue, I feel like this was the end of fall 2010. The conversation began normal, and the customer had a straightforward agenda…”
So begins the story of serendipity and listening with an ear to solve problems — not just sell things — that evolved into an end-to-end relationship between Dell and HealthSpot the Consumer Electronics Association’s Small Business of the Year 2014, soon to be seen in Rite Aid stores.
HealthSpot was just getting started, a four-person company, when Robbie Page called Dell to order some laptops for the new venture. Aaron Shaff was a working in the sales queue and as he gathered information to open a new account he says,
“I remember thinking for a short second; what if this was my friend from college, and decided to say ‘I went to college with a friend named Robbie Page’. Apparently this caught his attention enough to ask where I went to college and I said Earlham College, and Robbie responded ‘so did I…who is this?!! I said ‘it’s Shaff’ and we had a good laugh. I mean of all the people he could have gotten and that call makes my desk? This still boggles my mind, I mean really?”
As the two caught up on the years since they’d last seen each other, Shaff listened to the goals of HealthSpot and heard the potential.
“I love solving problems using technology,” HealthSpot Founder and CEO Steve Cashman told a group of Dell employees (including Dell CMO Karen Quintos and VP/GM Dell OEM Solutions Joyce Mullen, pictured right) gathered at our headquarters earlier this year to learn more about the company.
It was a trip to an urgent care facility when his daughter had swimmer’s ear that first got him wondering how to create the highest-quality, lowest-cost healthcare.
With that seed of an idea, the company that HealthSpot has become went from napkin sketch to launch in just 36 months. That took a lot more than just a few laptops. In the early stages, there were a few servers, more laptops and peripherals, “but then the conversation really got to what would be in the kiosks, and before you knew it, I was telling Robbie everything he could purchase through Dell,” Shaff says. “It ended up we could offer every electronic device that would make up the kiosk, apart from the medical devices.”
That’s the work of Dell OEM Solutions, our team that takes a holistic approach to designing, developing and delivering Dell-powered technologies that accelerate customers’ time to market with their own intellectual property. For HealthSpot, that solution encompasses hardware, software and even sourcing third-party electronics for their kiosks.
“OEM Solutions is a microcosm of all of Dell,” noted Amanda Hodges, executive director, Global OEM Solutions Marketing. “We have to be able to listen to the customer and understand the problem they want to solve, rather than just hearing what they are asking for at the moment.”
The problem HealthSpot wants to solve is access to healthcare.
“One billion people around the world don’t have that access, and while many may walk up to two days to reach a healthcare professional in Africa, even in a developed country like the United States, Americans with insurance will have to wait an average of six days to get an appointment with their doctor,” noted Lisa Maughan, vice president of marketing at HealthSpot.
Cashman envisions HealthSpot’s private, walk-in kiosks as an extension for healthcare providers, rather than competition.
“Many doctors spend their own time each year on mission trips to provide care for those in need, but imagine if they could see those same people year-round without ever having to leave home?” he asked.
As the relationship with Dell grew, and more of our members became involved, they each caught Cashman’s excitement for that sort of opportunity and became a part of the HealthSpot vision.
“One of the best things about leading the OEM team is that we get to work with companies that are doing things with technology that we couldn’t imagine,” said Joyce Mullen, vice president and general manager, Dell OEM Solutions. “Our team is an enabler of companies’ ideas, and that means we have to understand the bigger picture of what problem they are trying to solve and how Dell OEM solutions can help them accomplish their goals.”
Everyone at Dell gets excited by that opportunity to help our customers do more of what they want to do, even if they aren’t a direct part of the OEM Solutions team.
“I felt really responsible for making a customer happy,” HealthSpot’s original Dell contact Shaff said. “I knew this might be the next technology to really impact the world, and even more so, as it was clear that healthcare was about to change in a huge way.
“The most amazing part is the luck of me getting a queue call from my old college buddy that has grown to Michael Dell recently being inside of a HealthSpot kiosk. It’s nice to know that I was a part of something that will positively impact society, and permits healthcare to deliver itself in a new way!”
