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By Eric Wicklund, Editor, mHIMSS LAS VEGAS – Three big players in the healthcare field are joining forces to create a mobile platform for Android-based devices and apps.
Verizon, Motorola Mobility and BoxTone announced the joint venture early Tuesday as the HIMSS12 Conference and Exhibition was set to begin in Las Vegas. The collaboration will bring together BoxTone’s enterprise mobility management (EMM) software platform for the Droid RAZR and Droid RAZR MAXX smartphones, as well as the Droid XYBOARD 10.1 and 8.2 tablets by Motorola, on Verizon Wireless’ 4G LTE network.
‘We’re finally seeing purpose-built devices specifically for healthcare,” said Brian Reed, BoxTone’s Chief Product Officer. “By combining that with enterprise-grade mobility and security and management, you’re bringing together everything that a (healthcare provider) needs in a mobile platform. Now you can be on-site, doing remote medical care.”
“Healthcare has always told us, ‘Come to me with a solution. Don’t come to me with pieces of a puzzle and expect us to put them together,” added Sheldon Hebert, Motorola Mobility’s senior director of enterprise business. “This gives them what they need – the right data to the right person at the right place.”
Motorola officials said their smartphones are well-suited for healthcare environments, and are also pre-loaded with Citrix software to allow for access to electronic medical records and 3LM software for embedded device security.
According to Reed, the challenge in creating this platform was in answering specific needs of healthcare providers, which range from data security and battery life to developing a platform that would handle all sorts of devices seamlessly. BoxTone’s EMM platform, he said, incorporates device management for security, compliance monitoring and performance, change management and automatic provisioning.
Reed, Hebert and Bill Gordon, manager of M2M product development in healthcare for Verizon Enterprise Solutions, said the platform coincides with the “tremendous uptick in the home healthcare business,” and has also piqued the interest of the military.
“This solution underscores the important role mobility is playing in transforming healthcare,” said Peter Tippett, vice president and chief medical officer of Verizon Connected Healthcare Solutions, in a press release. “Mobile devices and healt care apps represent one of the biggest IT opportunities of the decade to improve and transform care delivery. Working with Motorola and BoxTone we have brought together complementary capabilities to create an easy-to-deploy and manage mobility solution for our healthcare customers.”
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