iPhone provides vital link to medical records. This is a pretty interesting case study by Apple and Toronto’s Mt. Sinai Hospital, with a slick video to boot. You might think this is an overt statement to RIM – the fact that Apple’s healthcare enterprise ‘coming-out’ party is in Toronto, about an hour drive from RIM headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. There’s more to it, though. Mt. Sinai has developed an in-house iPhone app called VitalHub for displaying patient records, test results, vitals, as well as access to the hospital’s repository of medical literature. More than just an app, VitalHub Corp., a Mount Sinai Hospital company, appears to be making preparations for a formal launch.

Healthagen launches new iPhone version of its consumer-focused healthcare information app. iTriage 2.0 vastly improves the search capabilities for finding healthcare providers and better connects medical symptoms to the specific physicians who treat those conditions.

TouchDx releases TremorTracer, an iPhone tremor assessment for patients with Parkinson’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis and other movement disorders. TremorTracer provides physicians a unique and revolutionary tremor assessment suite with which to identify, record, and monitor longitudinal change in writing skills for patients with fine motor function deficits, due to tremor. The application includes three tests: Archimedes Spiral Test, Writing Test, and Straight line Test.

‘Smart’ contact lens with embedded wireless sensor promises earlier diagnosis and optimized treatment of Glaucoma. STMicroelectronics has announced that it will develop and supply a wireless micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) sensor that acts as a transducer, antenna and mechanical support for additional read-out electronics in a breakthrough platform developed by Swiss company Sensimed AG. Known as the SENSIMED Triggerfish®, the solution is based on a "smart" contact lens that uses a tiny embedded strain gauge to monitor the curvature of the eye over a period of, typically, 24 hours, providing valuable disease management data that is not currently obtainable using conventional ophthalmic equipment… Or, BORG phase 1 as I call it.

World’s first 3G/4G Android phone, HTC EVO 4G, coming to Sprint this summer… Ok, this is just a freaky device. Check out the specs: 4G (up to 10x faster than 3G) within one of Sprint’s 27 4G-enabled markets; 4.3 inch, pinch-to-zoom display; 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor; dual cameras (8 megapixel autofocus camera with HD-capable camcorder + forward-facing 1.3 megapixel camera); built-in mobile hotspot functionality, allowing up to 8 Wi-Fi enabled devices to share 4G connection; HDMI output; and, of course, Android 2.1 operating system… I guess the iPhone is going to have to wait a little longer.

I had the opportunity to meet Logical Images CEO Richard Cohan at HIMSS just after the company launched VisualDx Mobile for the iPhone. My impressions of the application were that the content appears well organized, and there is a plethora of images that are… well, gross. Then again, I’m not a physician. The company provided me a copy of the software which I, in turn, gave to a primary care physician to get some ‘real’ feedback. The initial response is “wow… cool”. The physician found the content very well organized and easy to navigate. The images are fantastic, and support diagnosis of a multitude of skin conditions and diseases. Great tool for a range of clinicians… Good stuff.

Wanted to put in a quick mention of Axial Exchange, a Raleigh, NC-based start-up focused on health data integration. I’ve met Founder and CEO Joanne Rohde a couple of times as the company has continued to evolve. Joanne is former COO and Director of Health IT Strategy at Red Hat, Inc. Tapping into their extensive open-source experience, the company is in the process of releasing their code to the open-source community via the Axial Project. Keep an eye on them. They’ve covered a lot of ground in a short period.

Speaking of start-ups, I had the chance to see a demo of RememberItNow!’s medication reminder and PHR software. The web-based application is very clean and well designed. I think the interface is superior to Google Health and at least on-par with Microsoft’s HealthVault. The real spark of the application is its built-in scheduling and reminding functionality, which gives patients and caregivers the ability to set medication and other event reminder alerts that can be delivered via multiple formats, including email and SMS.

It seems like I’ve been talking about PHRs quite a lot lately, which is interesting because I have not been a big fan of them for the last few years. Historically, my biggest objection has been that – other than a few specific situations, primarily related to disease state management – I just don’t think patient created data is very reliable or useful. I think the evolution of HIEs, thanks in no small part to funding, will advance PHRs from patient diaries to portable electronic health records. This is not a subtle difference.

HIEs will ultimately populate PHRs with provider- (and device-) created, event-driven information… similar to how your bank sends transaction data to your Microsoft Money or Quicken account. Just as OFX standards have moved personal financial software from fancy check registers to powerful financial management tools, HIEs, or their underlying architecture, will take PHRs to the next level. This does not necessarily bode well for all PHR vendors, though. In fact, quite the opposite. The companies that will benefit the most – those that can scale quickly, have credibility, can affect – if not dictate – standards, and perhaps most importantly, can integrate multiple complementary strategic assets. So, my money’s on Google and Microsoft, regardless of what their solutions look like at present. Anyone else in this space should be thinking long and hard about unique, valuable, and defensible intellectual property. That’s my two cents, anyway.

AT&T expands industry’s leading lineup of popular smartphones. The carrier has added the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus, and will soon unveil an Android-based smartphone from Dell – the Dell Aero. This will be Dell’s first smartphone available in the U.S., and will feature a custom user interface developed by Dell and AT&T.

Also from AT&T… Vitality GlowCaps utilize AT&T wireless network to improve prescription medication adherence. GlowCaps are intelligent pill caps that fit on standard prescription bottles and use light then sound reminders, which can be followed by a phone call or text message so people don’t miss a dose. In addition to supporting and tracking medication compliance, data generated by GlowCaps can be used to automatically refill prescriptions as pills deplete… Pretty cool stuff.

Unbound Medicine announces the release of Control of Communicable Diseases Manual (CCDM) for Mobile + Web. The American Public Health Association (APHA) has partnered with Unbound Medicine to deliver the Control of Communicable Diseases Manual on the Unbound Platform. CCDM for Mobile + Web includes the latest on identifying, managing, and preventing hundreds of infectious diseases, as well as public health news feeds and links to journal abstracts and citations.

An interesting article by Sascha Segan from PCMag, “Windows Mobile 6.5 Finds a Niche in Business.” The article is reminiscent of a conversation I had with Scott Garmon, Sr. Product Manager, Mobility Systems, of Honeywell at HIMSS. Despite the current buzz of Windows Phone 7 Series – a pure consumer bid, Microsoft is not in any hurry to drop Windows Mobile 6.x where it has a dominant share of the enterprise digital assistant (EDA) market. EDAs are the mobile devices of choice for many organizations in industries like retail, transportation, healthcare, and the military. Motorola, for instance, which announced the new Windows Mobile 6.5-based MC75a at CTIA in Las Vegas, has sold more than 850,000 units of their most popular devices, MC70 and MC75… It will be interesting to see how diligently Microsoft continues to support the legacy OS as newer operating systems, such as Android, make headway into the EDA market.

Avaya helps small healthcare companies enhance customer service, gain new efficiencies. IntrinsiQ, Bay Shore Medical and SPEAR Physical Therapy all recently selected Avaya’s IP Office, a communications solution for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Avaya recently launched a new version of IP Office that features enhanced unified communications (UC) capabilities and makes UC up to 40% more affordable for many small businesses… Congratulations on the wins.

Diversinet’s new MobiSecure SMS provides healthcare organizations with secure and protected SMS communications. The solution includes a lightweight mobile handset client application that secures communication via any wireless mobile device using the existing SMS infrastructure capability from the mobile operator or service provider. Encryption and strong authentication provide security for both one- and two-way messages, and a remote access wipe capability enables users to erase sensitive data in the event a mobile device is lost or stolen.

Enterprise messaging from Verizon Wireless offers secure, rapid, cost-effective business communications to mobile phones… Not sure this is anything new, but hey it’s Verizon at CTIA. I’m willing to give them their props. They just wanted everyone to know that industries ranging from healthcare to education rely on Enterprise Messaging from Verizon Wireless to send large numbers of 450-character text messages to their workforce or customers from their "in-house" messaging applications or directly from an online self-serve portal.

It also helps highlight some of the same messaging that was pervasive at HIMSS – there is a lot of interest in enterprise communication. I would be among the first to caution against mistaking vendor messaging for genuine market interest. However, in lieu of direct input from a statistically significant sampling of buyers, I believe it’s not always a case of the tail wagging the dog. Sometimes you can actually tell a LOT about what the market is collectively saying by listening to what vendors are telling the market.

For years we’ve been talking about the convergence of mobile devices, and while we may not be there just yet, we’re pretty darn close – and that device is looking more and more like a smartphone. It only stands to reason that enterprises should seek to converge the communication channels into a single platform or conduit. It’s fascinating to watch secure enterprise SMS gaining traction in healthcare as a standalone functionality, literally as some of the traditional telecom heavyweights hone the UC message. Where do these firecrackers, like Voalte and Wallace Wireless’ WIC Pager, fit in the mix? Does an organization standardize on an enterprise device like Blackberry, or do they support consumer devices? Like the fabled Hydra, every answer seems to generate twice (if not 20x) as many new questions. I suggest anyone drafting the 5-year communications plan use a pencil. Stay tuned.

Finally, congratulations to Ingenious Med founder, Steven Liu, MD. Dr. Liu is among the more than 150 hospitalists nationwide who have earned the inaugural designation of Senior Fellow in Hospital Medicine (SFHM).

Microsoft Throws Interesting Win 7 Mobile Ingredients into the MIX

By The UI Guy

When Steve Ballmer failed to unveil the Courier tablet at CES 2010, the blogosphere went back to ignoring Microsoft (who we’ll call MSFT for fun) as everyone from techies to cable news presenters – who wouldn’t know a mobile app from a hole in the ground – switched their child-like attention spans to the Apple hypefest.

While all eyes were on Steve Jobs and co., MSFT debuted the Windows Phone 7 Series in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress 2010. This announcement garnered some media attention, but it was a mere sideshow during the iPad circus. Undaunted, Microsoft continued to work on practical tools for the 7 series – including those that could have more impact on the healthcare mobility space than anything with an “i” prefix.

Last week MSFT delighted its developer and designer base, which far exceeds Apple’s in depth, breadth and business focus, with the release of a new toolkit for the Windows 7 phone at the Mix10 show. Not too many surprises, as we knew that most likely the new mobile OS would be a flavor of Silverlight. However with the launch of Silverlight 4 Beta, MSFT has opened up a dedicated suite that was built from the ground up to support the new Windows Mobile 7 OS.

This is a strong strategic move for Ballmer, Gates et al. With the SDK being primarily a flavor of Silverlight software, vendors and app developers that focus on the .net framework will be able to re-purpose their work for the Win Mo 7 platform with ease.

In contrast to Apple, which let its developer base figure out its SDKs for themselves, Microsoft has essentially created a plug and play kit with transparent and usable features. With Blend 4, a user simply opens the program, and selects “Open a new template for Windows Mobile.” It’s then just a matter of porting over previous work. Anyone that’s a MSFT developer is now a WinMo developer. There is no learning curve, and traditional Windows apps can become fully functional on WinMo 7 devices within weeks. Yes, you read that right. Think of the possibilities.

Too often we distill the viability of a platform to the number of its available apps. If you believed the mainstream press, you’d think that Apple is in an unassailable position because of the sheer quantity of offerings in its App Store. But when it comes to impacting business, including healthcare, volume counts for nothing. Healthcare providers need focused applications that solve real-world problems. MSFT is making it easier for developers to create these by taking the hassle out of SDK use.

There could be some very interesting things done with some of the preliminary components of the tool kit including:

• Hardware acceleration for video and graphics
• Accelerometer for motion sensing
• Multi-touch
• Camera and microphone
• Location awareness
• Push notifications
• Native phone functionality

Two of these – the accelerometer and multi-touch capability may not overcome objections from Applephiles, but they do at least put MSFT on a level footing in two areas dominated until now by Apple.

Yet, arguably the most important to note is the native push notifications. Whether you use Gmail, Outlook or any other e-mail system, you likely get e-mail notification bubbles in the bottom right corner of your screen when new messages arrive. The new Microsoft platform will enable software developers to create similar real-time notifications, but via the OS instead of a browser.

For a hospital using enterprise forms management, relevant users, such as nurses, could be notified on their WinMo devices when a newly admitted patient’s forms are incorporated into the EHR, prompting them to prepare for that patient’s arrival on the clinical floor. There are dozens of other possible use cases across the facility for those staff that need up to date access to information outside of a browser environment.

Location awareness could also be significant, as healthcare software could present information only relevant to where a care provider is. For example, a physician who is registered at several hospitals would be presented with a targeted set of patient data depending on which location he or she was at. This would enable clinicians to be more focused, by eliminating redundant information.

The second interesting release last week was the debut of Internet Explorer 9. What I found most interesting is the support for HTML 5, and more importantly SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). It’s great to see MSFT heading into this space sooner than later, indicating that they will be at the forefront of providing UI development and design tools for this powerful new iteration of HTML.

Much of the concern within the design space is that there has not been any real design software released specifically for HTML 5. Microsoft’s splash in HTML will likely spur Adobe to make further enhancements to Flash, leading to competition-fueled innovation that has been previously lacking. As with the WinMo 7 SDK toolkit, developers are salivating over the prospect of intuitive, usable development tools that will enable them to bring high-impact healthcare technology to mobile users. It promises to be an interesting few months for Windows watchers. MSFT may not have the pizzaz of its fruitily-named competitor, but when it comes to moving healthcare IT mobility forward, the Seattle-based powerhouse is proving it cannot be ignored.

From Who’Dat: “Re: Transcription Services. I’ve heard that docs reviewing records on a patient after more automated data entry have a harder time differentiating who that patient is, and recalling specifics.  That can be a problem in a courtroom with a liability case…records presented and you have a somewhat generic patient record.  No “personalized” records which prompts memory.  Patients all begin to “look” alike.” I agree. I don’t have any basis from a legal perspective, but I’ve definitely seen enough template-driven notes to wonder where the human element has gone in the mix.

In response to GoGal’s comment in my last post: “Re: Transcription Services. What is going to happen to all these dictation companies as the pie gets ever so smaller with EMR deployment?! Epic deployments are reducing dictation by 90%,” I’ve received the following reply from David Owen, Global Business Development Manager, 3M Health Information Systems:

And the following response from Michael Finke, Chairman & CEO, M*Modal:

Big thanks to John Shagoury, David Owen, and Michael Finke for giving us Nuance, 3M, and M*Modal’s perspective, respectively. I’m sure we’ll be talking about these issues for a long time to come.

In the news…

Riverwoods Urgent Care uses smartphone technology to connect patients with medical assistance. The urgent care facility has partnered with Healthagen to promote its free-standing urgent care through the iTriage application. The iPhone and Android supported application enables consumers to evaluate symptoms, learn about possible causes and find appropriate locations for treatment… I’ve mentioned the company in the past and expect a lot more announcements in the coming months.

…And before I could even finish my post… EliteCare 24 Hour Emergency Center uses same smartphone technology to connect patients with emergency care.

Lexi-Comp releases expanded medical software application for Palm webOS devices. The new release makes Lexi-Comp ON-HAND available for Palm Pre and Pixi smartphones. Additionally, with the launch of Palm’s webOS 1.4, Lexi-Comp’s initially released Lexi-Drugs + Interact package for the Pre is now expanded to include most of Lexi-Comp’s databases and packages available for mobile devices.

First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” organization launches “Apps for Healthy Kids” competition. The competition challenges software developers to create innovative, fun, and engaging applications – for the web, desktop, or mobile devices – using the USDA Nutrition dataset. “Let’s Move” is a nationwide educational campaign to tackle the challenge of childhood obesity.

More of an FYI than news per se… Epocrates’ market research services reach new heights.

GE Healthcare releases Clinical IMAGES iPhone App. The application allows radiologists to choose a product, and browse nearly 100 sample images and videos by anatomy or by applications specific to the selected system. GE Healthcare plans to keep adding new product and clinical image sets periodically to the application, including Xray, ultrasound, and PET/NUC, which will be available soon…I must confess that I don’t quite understand the use-case. Sure I get the value of radiological and other images on an iPhone, but not a SAMPLE image. Educational value, perhaps?… But for a radiologist? This looks more like a case of some really bored developers over at GE wanting to have their own iPhone app. Now that, I get.

FCC unveils National Broadband Plan. The Federal Communications Commission has been working on the plan for nearly a year. A summary of the 360-page plan is available on the FCC Web site (PDF document). The FCC has been leaking parts of the plan over the last few weeks, so there are not many surprises. Of particular interest, the plan calls for an additional 500 MHz of spectrum to be used for broadband, including 300 earmarked for mobile use. The plan also calls for a Mobility Fund, which would provide one-time support for states deploying mobile broadband networks to increase the reach of 3G.

AT4 wireless selected to develop the Continua Health Alliance Certification Test Tool v1.5. The new test tool will be based on Continua’s next generation of design guidelines. The Continua v1.5 Design Guidelines will add new device specializations supporting PAN Interface, email transmission method for HRN Interface, and specifying WAN Interface to complete the whole end-to-end Continua Architecture.

iSOFT group partners with Medic4all to boost telehealth strategy. According to the release, the companies will collaborate to deliver end-to-end telehealth equipment and solutions that cater to the burgeoning demand for preventative healthcare and wellness management.

Sprint and Axeda announce alliance for global M2M solutions. The partnership aims to make it easier, faster and more cost-efficient for businesses to take machine-to-machine (M2M) solution ideas from concept to completion and deliver connected products using the Sprint 3G network and the Axeda(R) Platform.

Blackberry users casting glances at iPhone, Android. According to recent research conducted by Crowd Science, 39 percent of 159 Blackberry owners polled said they “definitely or probably” want an iPhone for their next smartphone purchase. Another 34 percent said they would prefer a smartphone that uses Google’s Android operating system… Ouch! While the overall study included more than 1,000 smartphone owners, the sampling is pretty small of Blackberry owners. Furthermore, the poll did not allow Blackberry owners to express satisfaction with their current model. Nevertheless, I think the poll illustrates what many of us already suspect – that Blackberry is particularly susceptible in the consumer market.  Very interesting poll in light of my recent conversation with Blackberry… The poll also did not ask users about Palm or Windows Mobile phones. Let me go ahead and address the Palm question – I have a Pre, but want an iPhone. I may be coaxed to stay with Sprint a little longer because of my contract (boo!!!) and because of impending availability of Nexus One. 

Finally, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to complete the Mobile Resource Guide registration form.

From GoGirl: “Re: Transcription Services. What is going to happen to all these dictation companies as the pie gets ever so smaller with EMR deployment?! Epic deployments are reducing dictation by 90%.”

I think this is a great question – one which strikes at the core of transcription, and EMR documentation itself. I personally have come-around on the question of typing versus dictation – maybe not 180 degrees, but at least 120. Having implemented an EMR in the past, and being a big supporter of technology, I have been adamant that physicians should type, should use templates, should use the EMR as intended. I’m sure that I’ve said on at least one occasion that dictation flies in the face of the EMR.

My opinion has changed – not because of anything related to workflow or behavior modifications – but because I think documentation suffers. While typed and point-and-click notes are not inherently inferior to transcribed notes, I definitely think they encourage short-cuts and depersonalize the encounter. That’s just my opinion. Ultimately any note is only as good as the person taking it. Either way, I think we will see an increasing number of solutions that take a hybrid approach – templates, drop-down menus, free form text, and the option to append a dictation for note “enrichment.”

I thought it would be great to hear from the transcription companies on this question so I sent it over to a couple. They haven’t had much time to consider the question, but John Shagoury, President, Nuance Healthcare was kind enough to send me the following reply:

I expect others to weigh-in over the coming days. Where do you think the industry is heading?

In the news…

Humana launches MyHumana Mobile. The mobile Web-based offering includes three tools: Mobile Urgent Care Finder – to locate an urgent care facility using either a zipcode or built-in GPS feature for smartphone users; Mobile Spending Account Balance Viewer – to view recent spending account activity and current balance details; and Mobile Member Information Tool – to view health-plan member details on demand, including the Member ID number and the member’s group name and group number.

RememberItNow! launches mobile medication reminder and eHealth service. The company claims to offer the first eHealth service which helps people take medications correctly by sending reminders to their cell phone. Presumably the distinction is that RememberItNow! runs as a web-based application that sends alerts to a companion mobile application. The HealthAssist iPhone app announced last month, for instance, is a standalone smartphone application that assists patients with medication management. RememberItNow! also includes a host of personal health record (PHR) capabilities… (BTW, I’ve gotta add that the company’s landing page has the same design as Mint.com and Practice Fusion. Is this some kind of bizzaro conspiracy?)

Ok, I tried really hard to overlook this press release. I opened and closed the page three times. I just couldn’t let it go without comment. It’d be no easier to turn away from the gore of a jack-knifed semi and pan-caked Prius on the turnpike… “Hospital executives at largest healthcare IT event in nation witness launch of InfoLogix healthcare mobility solutions suite.” Really? And here I thought everyone was at HIMSS to see me. The company announced a $3m infusion from Hercules Technology Growth Capital on Tuesday.

Forrester: healthcare IT leaders need to address mobile security and management. In a report titled, “Managing and Securing Mobile Healthcare Data and Devices,” Forrester Consulting found that regulatory compliance tops the list of concerns among its network of healthcare and life sciences IT decision makers with 86 percent of the respondents ranking it as a high or critical priority. The study was commissioned by Fiberlink Communications Corporation and is available at healthcare.maas360.com.

In tandem with the report, Fiberlink debuts business intelligence platform for healthcare mobile device compliance. The company, creator and developer of cloud-based mobility as a service (MaaS) solutions, offers the Healthcare IT Compliance Service. The MaaS360® Healthcare IT Compliance Service gives IT professionals a single, unified view of policy and status reporting for all their mobile devices, helping organizations to identify and manage compliance vulnerabilities and data security risks.

In separate, yet related news… I had a great conversation with Fraser Edward, Manager of Market Development – Healthcare, Research in Motion (RIM), better known by their Blackberry brand name. Fraser and I were scheduled to talk at HIMSS, but we had a slight mix-up… and too much GWCC ground to cover. I’m actually glad that I had a chance to talk to him without all the distractions and the rigid schedule. As you might imagine, we spent a bit of time talking about security and enterprise management. Makes perfect sense. RIM is still way out in front of their competitors in this area. As I told Fraser, I think just about everyone recognizes that RIM offers better security (at least for the time being). I think the challenge is that security is a relative term and, despite HIPAA and perhaps because of it, there are not clear, well-defined requirements. So, while Blackberry may be good enough for the FBI, is it good enough for healthcare? On one hand this is good for RIM because they surely score well on perception studies, on the other, how many enterprises are holding back on mobility because of fear of non-compliance? I don’t know. My guess is that the uncertainty favors RIM.

RIM is wisely making haste to leverage their strong enterprise position. While I really like to talk about niche or vertical solutions within the healthcare enterprise – such as PatientKeeper, Voalte, IQMax, AirStrip, etc… None of these solutions is driving large-scale adoption across the enterprise. True enough. RIM is particularly interested in nurse alert notification solutions, and unified communications (UC) more broadly. From their perspective, it’s great to have a handful of enterprise apps on a device that a clinician can use, but let’s make sure that we first get a device in everyone’s hand. As anyone attending HIMSS this year can attest, this a very popular goal. Solve the communication challenge and everything else follows.

I think this is a fantastic strategy for RIM for a couple of reasons. First, they already have substantial market penetration. The additional communication capabilities that they can bring to bear generally require only incremental investment. For example, if an enterprise is already using Blackberry Enterprise Server to manage corporate email, a number of add-ons can be implemented to tie into other key enterprise assets, including PBXs and even hospital information systems. Second, application developers tend to be device and OS agnostic. Sure there might be a sizzle factor to putting an app on an iPhone.  An iPhone may even be the preferred route for gaining end-user mindshare. But when it comes to selling applications to the enterprise, developers understand Blackberry’s position – just look how quickly they release a Blackberry version. This makes it very difficult for one smartphone to gain a competitive advantage over another in the realm of enterprise apps. Finally, the devices are just plain powerful. In other words, they can readily handle the multiple challenges of UC, including voice, text, email, and data. My bet is on a smartphone winning out the end-device race, and Blackberry’s multi-tasking capabilities give it yet another feather (though rumors are brewing that multitasking will be supported in iPhone’s 4.0 release expected in the summer).

As long as RIM can help advance the cause of UC, I think they are in the best position (of end-user device manufacturers) to capitalize in the short-term. The things I think they should be most concerned about: one, you’re never as far ahead as you think (and if you are, tell yourself otherwise), and two, don’t underestimate the power of sizzle. Sizzle can make people do irrational things – like, “maybe fleet management isn’t that important”, or “HIPAA schmippa” or “maybe we should hold-off on making a decision for a little while to see if the uber-device catches up”. 

While Fraser’s clearly not in a position to discuss products and features on the horizon, I think RIM gets the sizzle factor – after all, once upon a time, they were pretty cool, too. I fully expect them to respond to the iPhone in some form or fashion. In the meantime, they’ve got a great story to tell and the enterprise credentials to back it up…

Finally, congrats to Voalte for capturing almost 73% of the vote for the hottest new mobile app.  AirStrip finished second at 15% – though it was beginning to gain ground. Now that you can pre-order the iPad, take a second to answer my latest poll – Do you plan on purchasing one this year?