Yahoo! isn’t the only big player asking its employees to trade in their BlackBerry phones.
A Cleveland Clinic rep confirmed to MedCity News that the BlackBerry-centric hospital is in the beginning stages of transitioning to iPhones for its doctors.
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Once the most popular mobile device among hospitals, known for being secure and convenient for emailing, the BlackBerry is losing its grip on hospitals — not to mention the rest of the world. Data from a 2011 Manhattan Research survey indicates the iPhone took over as the preferred phone for physicians in 2011, with 75 percent of physicians owning an Apple device.
Why make the switch? “The transition is being done in an effort to give our clinicians the ability to do new things with the latest tools and take our model of care practice to wherever our patients are,” was the rep’s response.
Translation: Look at a 2009 pilot study of the iPhone 3G at some of the University Health Network’s inpatient units. It found that to physicians, the iPhone was appealing because of its touch-screen navigation and access to more applications. Despite early concerns about data security with the iPhone, other big hospitals have made the move too.
Access to more apps was what brought iPhones into 14 inpatient units at Massachusetts General Hospital earlier this year when it launched Voalte’s communications technology. Nurses use it for intra-unit communication, said George Reardon, director of clinical support services at Mass Gen, and it’s been very well received, although the hospital still uses other mobile devices as well.
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The Department of Veterans Affairs, whose 200,000 healthcare personnel previously could use only government-acquired BlackBerrys to access its network, opened the network to iPhones and iPads in October 2011. Apple also touts Memorial Hermann Healthcare System and Mount Sinai Hospital as iPhone loyalists. This move by the Clinic, regarded as one of the top-rated hospitals in the country, is just another sign that BlackBerry’s reign in healthcare is over.
BlackBerry’s maker, Research in Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM), has crumbled in other sectors too. In 2011, the iPhone edged out BlackBerry in use by businesses and enterprises. The Canadian company’s shares are down nearly 50 percent since the start of 2012, and its worldwide mobile device market share is down to less than 5 percent, according to research firm IDC, compared to 11.5 percent a year ago.
It seems that John Halamka‘s prediction in a November 2011 post is coming to fruition:
All companies regress to the mean and for RIM it appears to be the beginning of the end …
RIM has been an innovator. The BlackBerry is secure. The BlackBerry has been easy to manage at the enterprise level. However, BlackBerry is architected to route messages via RIM’s centralized infrastructure. If that fails, every BlackBerry in the world fails. BlackBerry’s user experience has not kept pace with the competition. BlackBerry’s application development tools and app store have not kept pace with iPhone or Android. Devices such as the Playbook have been introduced before they were ready.
“I’m seeing a slow death of BlackBerry,” he concluded. “We have about 400 people still on the BlackBerry Enterprise Server. I imagine as contracts expire more will jump to iPhones and Androids. We lose five to 10 BlackBerry accounts per month.”