Apple’s MobileFirst partnership with IBM sees yet more apps launched

2 Apr 2015

Apple’s targeting of enterprise customers continues apace, with its IBM partnership seeing eight new releases in the healthcare, retail, insurance and transport areas.

Partnering last July, Apple’s decision to join with IBM on this project was focused on capitalising on the latter’s big data and analytic capabilities.

It was hoped that, by working together they could develop unique, useful iOS apps for professionals throughout many areas of enterprise, therefore encouraging them to purchase iPhones and iPads.

Essentially, IBM would be optimising the devices for industry, something that made a lot of sense to Apple.

The first apps emerged last December, with their markets covering travel, banking, insurance, government, retail and telecommunications. A handful have been released since but these new eight bring the total so far to 22.

Health RN

Health RN is the first of the new apps listed

Healthcare, which has four apps in the new release, has perhaps the most impressive tools. Hospital RN, for example, allows nurses to utilise “iBeacon technology”, tapping into an integrated system to communicate with colleagues and respond top patient issues.

This is billed to release nurses from the laborious task of managing patient information, making things easier and more streamlined.

Take the healthy option

Elsewhere the Hospital Lead iPad app has “all the information charge nurses need right at their fingertips,” says Apple.

“Push notifications deliver escalated tasks efficiently, so they can be assigned to a staff member with a tap. Prioritised task lists allow issues to be reported, delayed, delegated, or marked complete.”

HomeRN

Home RN aids nurses working off site

There’s also an app to link nurses technicians to their care teams, with a pretty cool Home RN app designed to help nurses on home visits.

“Home RN for iPhone equips home-based nurses with better tools to manage case loads and provide patient-centered care,” says IBM.

“iPhone and iOS make it easy for nurses to add photos, videos, text, and audio notes to the patient’s record. Push notifications to the patient’s care team make sharing progress simple and fast,” says Apple.

The other four apps released are:

Rapid Handover – Industrial: This makes it easy and intuitive for an industrial-products foreperson to document and share information with incoming shift members. Critical data including production goals, equipment maintenance, and crew lists are available at a glance in the moment of engagement.

Ancillary Sale – Transportation: Flight attendants can sell seat upgrades, food and beverages, and duty-free merchandise – all while in the air. And passengers can conveniently complete the transaction with Apple Pay or the swipe of a credit card via in-flight point-of-sale systems.

Order Commit – Retail: This gives real-time views on product data and vendor performance, and integrates with systems of record to ensure order commitments align to the merchandise strategy and streamline the buying process.

Risk Inspect  –  Insurance: This allows risk inspectors to deliver reports on the go, with new logging methods, powerful location-based services, and analytics-powered data and insights, empowering underwriters to price profitable business faster and more accurately while improving the loss ratio.

Nurse using a tablet, via Shutterstock

Gordon Hunt was a journalist with Silicon Republic

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