Feature Article

Free eNews Subscription>>
April 16, 2015

BlackBerry's BES12 Proves Communications Platform of Choice for CarePartners

Home healthcare providers have made some significant gains over the years, especially as the demographic shift in the United States and beyond starts to favor the elderly. This has led to firms such as CarePartners stepping in to offer services to a graying population, and with that, comes a need to supply such firms with tools to better provide services. CarePartners took advantage of BlackBerry's BES12 system to step up its communications capabilities within the operation.

More specifically, CarePartners turned to CellTrak's VisitManager system, which runs on BlackBerry 10 smartphones, and is managed by BES12, BlackBerry's enterprise mobility management (EMM) tool that works with several different operating systems. CarePartners went in on the system in a big way, according to reports, issuing BlackBerry 10 smartphones with the system included to over 4,000 employees currently in CarePartners' mobile workforce.

So what drew CarePartners' interest in this system? The sheer range of functions VisitManager could offer probably had a lot to do with it. VisitManager allows users to access patient information, securely, from a BlackBerry 10 device, and allows said users to update those records based on results obtained from the home visits. Calendar access allows for quick changes to a schedule, or establishment of future schedules, on the fly, while at the same time knowing just where to proceed to next. This allows for easy, secure communication between the workers in the field and those who perform the necessary back-office functions on site.

But that wasn't the only new connection between CarePartners and BlackBerry, according to reports. CarePartners is also set to move to BES12 to offer secure management for the deployment of the BlackBerry 10 smartphones, and allow for the support of several different mobile deployment models including the popular bring your own device (BYOD) doctrine being used in many offices today.

CarePartners' manager for organizational change, Kelly Baechler, offered up some comment on what pushed CarePartners to BlackBerry: “With the CellTrak solution on BlackBerry, we have realized greater scheduling efficiency and a drastic reduction in missed visits for our patients. Having real-time access to patient care plans has allowed us to provide the highest quality care. It was important to us to implement an EMM solution that gives us strict device management and the ability to provide management of a variety of devices, and that meets the security needs for healthcare. With BES12, we have control over our devices and we know our data is protected.”

Basically, it seems to have been a combination of factors. Any time someone starts talking about a device deployment strategy that involves several thousand users, like this one did, it generally doesn't take long to start considering factors of device management as well. The BlackBerry approach handles several different types of deployment strategy, but at the same time, also allows access to the services that CarePartners' field users would find useful. Throw in the security of information, and the whole move just makes that much more sense.

It should prove interesting to see if this works out for CarePartners, and if it gives BlackBerry the badly-needed shot in the arm, so to speak, it needs after so many losses in the consumer market. But for right now, BlackBerry seems to have a very happy new customer in CarePartners.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino


FOLLOW MobilityTechzone

Subscribe to MobilityTechzone eNews

MobilityTechzone eNews delivers the latest news impacting technology in the Wireless industry each week. Sign up to receive FREE breaking news today!
FREE eNewsletter