Most Popular Mobile Device at HIMSS11

I think it was quite evident that there was one mobile device that was by far the most popular mobile device at the healthcare IT conference, HIMSS 2011. The funny thing is that despite being the most popular device, the vendor of this device was no where to be found among the 1000+ HIMSS exhibitors. Yes, that’s right. There were 1000 exhibitors at HIMSS and the most popular mobile health device vendor was no where to be found.

Of course, if you haven’t guessed already, the most popular mobile device at HIMSS 11 was definitely the iPad.

It seemed like about every other booth had an iPad giveaway. Every EMR vendor at HIMSS had some sort of iPad strategy and many made announcements at HIMSS about their new iPad EMR. Sadly, I didn’t walk away with an iPad myself, unless some nice vendor contacts me in the next couple days saying that I won their drawing. Then, I’d jump for joy.

I find it pretty amazing that the iPad was marketed so well at HIMSS at a cost of $0. Yes, I saw the Fujitsu iPad like offering (although really a tablet with the iPad form factor and related similarities). I also saw the yet to be released Blackberry playbook. Yet, there was no booth for Apple. There were no Apple sales or marketing people at HIMSS. There was no big Apple party at HIMSS. Yet, there’s no doubt that the iPad came off a big winner at HIMSS.

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February 28, 2011 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Apple  Health Care  Healthcare IT  iPad  mHealth  Mobile Health Care
Tags:              Mobile Health

Blackberry Playbook for Hospitals and Mobile Medical Apps

iMedicalApps has an interesting article they posted recently talking about the possibility that the Blackberry Playbook could be the small form tablet of choice in hospitals and healthcare as opposed to the iPad.

Here’s their description of what one enterprise healthcare application company is doing with the Blackberry Playbook:

QNX, a large software company, recently showed off a medical reference design that allows the Blackberry Playbook to connect to medical peripheral devices via Bluetooth. The medical reference design is built on the QNX Neutrino RTOS, a platform that has a history of being FDA approved in regards to medical usage.

QNX states their software allows the Blackberry Playbook to connect to certain Continua Certified medical devices, such as blood pressure monitors, weight scales, and pulse ox devices.

It is very interesting that this company has chosen to go with the Blackberry Playbook and not the iPad. The blog mentions Apple’s approach to enterprise software being less than stellar, but I’ve also read that many think that the iPad might just break that mold. Plus, who’s to say that the Blackberry Playbook is going to be that much better. The market for the BB Playbook in enterprises is much smaller than say the Blackberry phone was in the enterprise. So, I’ll be surprised if Blackberry tries to make the Playbook any less consumer oriented than the iPad is today.

What is interesting is that I’ve heard very good things about the Blackberry Playbook and it being far better than all the Android tablets (although they suggested that will likely change over time because of Android’s openness) and even competes well with the iPad. I’ll be interested to try out a Blackberry Playbook myself.

If I can get my hands on one, I’ll provide a full review.

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February 15, 2011 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 6000 articles with John having written over 3000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 14 million times. John also manages Healthcare IT Central and Healthcare IT Today, the leading career Health IT job board and blog. John launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: and and .

Filed Under: Android  Apple  Blackberry  Health Care  Healthcare IT  iPad  Mobile Health Care
Tags:      Continua  Enterprise Healthcare  FDA Approved      Mobile Medical Apps  Neutrino RTOS  QNX