NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Friday, July 11, 2014

Finally, things are shaping up well for Canadian handset manufacturer BlackBerry Limited. According to a report in Economic Times, Blackberry is planning to introduce a novel service platform designed to cater to the needs of the health care sector. Following this development, the company’s shares jumped nearly 6% on yesterday’s trade.

The current development marks a step forward in BlackBerry’s pursuit of services for the fast growing health care sector. Earlier in the month of April, BlackBerry had revealed an investment in a privately held healthcare IT firm, NantHealth, whereby both the companies would be working together to launch a healthcare platform at hospitals. This device will help doctors access immediate information about patients’ health from observing equipment. Doctors can also share patient information with other medical professionals and consult diagnostic and treatment resources of top global institutions.

CA-based NantHealth’s cloud-based platform has already been installed in nearly 250 hospitals and connects over 16,000 medical devices. The platform also helps in collecting more than 3 billion important signs annually.

BlackBerry is running these services on a trial basis at different Indian hospitals and is also incorporating Health Information Systems (HIS) and medical equipment. According to India Brand Equity Foundation, which enables distribution of information of Indian products and services, the healthcare sector in India is estimated to scale a market size of $160 billion by 2017 from $78.6 billion in 2012. On the other hand, per-capita healthcare expenditure is expected to reach $88.7 by 2015 from $63.7 in 2012.