Steven Lazer

Working in technology for more than three decades, Steven Lazer has seen his fair share of change.

Now Dell Technologies’ Global Healthcare & Life Sciences CTO, Lazer – as the job title suggests — works with healthcare and life science organisations worldwide, particularly those utilising Dell's intellectual property to improve their capabilities. This can be anything from improving patient outcomes to improving the working lives of clinicians, making positive changes to the way modern healthcare is delivered and advancing life sciences.

Steven Lazer: A passionate technology and healthcare executive

“Throughout my career, I've navigated a diverse path within the realm of technology,” Lazer begins. “Despite starting with a foundation in chemistry and metallurgy upon leaving school, my fascination with early computer systems led me to develop my skills in assembly language and basic programming.”

As his career progressed, he moved into a chemical formulation database redevelopment project, where the utilisation of PIC as the operating system sparked a profound interest in technology. This, Lazer attests, marked the beginning of his journey into the evolving landscape of storage arrays and storage networking.

He explains: “In the early days of storage array development, I actively participated in developing and programming systems that expanded to sizes considered groundbreaking at the time, reaching multiple gigabytes of storage. This experience fueled my exploration of higher-level programming languages such as Unix and I delved into emerging technologies like high availability and Unix clusters.”

A career-defining moment

A pivotal moment for Laxer was when he became responsible for completing the development of a healthcare system’s data centre. This, he says, is where his affinity for healthcare technology came to life.

“Witnessing a severely injured trauma patient on a gurney passing by had a profound impact on me, instilling a passion for the meaningful purpose behind my technological pursuits in healthcare,” he continues.

This newfound passion led Lazer to spearhead the implementation of Epic within the healthcare system he was engaged with, before taking on additional projects and then becoming part of the Dell Technologies family in 2011.

Something Lazer brought into his roles at Dell — having assumed his current role in 2015 — is the simple but desirable quality of being a good listener. But for Lazer, that involves more than lending an ear. 

“Having the quality to listen clearly and without bias,” he says, adding the importance of this, especially when working in a sensitive environment like healthcare. This, paired with his clear perspective to identify connections between seemingly unrelated elements — recognising how they collectively contribute to creating significant impact — helps drive his role, providing a unique viewpoint and allowing for complex problem solving with compassion, something all too common in his line of work.

Passion and people most impactful in healthcare technology

Although his passion is a main driver of his success in both technology and healthcare, he notes there will never be enough hours in a day to fulfil all his wishes.

“A big challenge in my role is providing enough time and support for those around me and not allowing my passion to be overwhelming,” he adds, acknowledging that, although passion is good, he has to keep a clear head to obtain results that action meaningful change.

And that meaningful change is a key inspirational driver for Lazer. 

He continues: “I find inspiration in the everyday actions of people and my deep commitment to effecting positive change in the healthcare realm. The prospect of making a meaningful impact on democratising care globally is a source of great inspiration for me.” 

Read the full story HERE.​​​​​​​