Intel: Through Health and High Water

One of the last pieces of Intel's(INTC) reorganization from earlier this year finally emerged into the public view this week.

Intel's digital health group, one of five business groups formed in January as part of the chipmaker's largest-ever reorganization, has been operating out of view of investors for the past eight months.

But Louis Burns, Intel vice president and the group's leader, delivered a keynote address and held briefings during the company's semiannual conference for hardware and software engineers in San Francisco.

"Technology does not solve all of the problems, but it does take some important steps forward," said Burns, who focused on how technology can help modernize an antiquated health care system and reduce the amount of money spent on health care.

Details were scarce, but his group is tailoring Intel's semiconductors and related technologies to the health care industry, both to home health care and hospitals. One such project involves Intel's collaboration with 3,000 hospitals being designed in China. "We are active in that design, and they will likely contain a lot of servers and PCs," Burns said.

Products beyond standard computers powered by Intel's chips and technologies seem to be mostly in the development phase, and Burns declined to be specific about the size of his group or revenue.

He did, however, offer assurances that this was a business group with business goals. "This is not the altruistic part of Intel," he said. "I have very specific revenue goals for this year, next year and the next five years."

Burns said that Intel's technology could assist in health care-specific methods for data management, storage and collaboration, as well as in monitoring systems and other specialized computing devices to assist practitioners and patients.