Last month when BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion officially launched its long awaited tablet, PlayBook, we noted the multiple hattips that RIM gave the medical community during the launch. For example, on-stage at the launch event for PlayBook, TouMetis CEO and President Mark Willnerd showed off a medical app that displayed patient data for orthopedic surgeons who could use the app to design new knee replacements and more. In the PlayBook press release RIM also gave EMR access as a potential use case: “For example, a medical records application can attach image files to a patient’s medical record, with the option to open or preview the record, or view the list of available images before it is downloaded to the BlackBerry smartphone.”
Yesterday at the Adobe MAX event, RIM co-CEO and Founder Mike Laziridis took the stage following the first live demo of the BlackBerry PlayBook. Guess what kind of application the demo featured? That’s right, a medical app: Client Outlook’s eUnity imaging application. However, interestingly, the demo showed eUnity streaming “over the net” as the rep from Adobe put it. It’s not a native app.
According to Client Outlook, eUnity is “a zero footprint medical image viewer that provides healthcare professionals with secure access to diagnostic images such as X-rays, CT, MRI and nuclear medicine scans from any Internet-enabled location.” The application allows clinicians to view diagnostic quality images from any Web browser and also enables them to directly collaborate with other medical professionals at the same time. Health Canada, the country’s regulatory body, awarded Client Outlook’s eUnity app a Class II Medical Device certification just a few weeks ago.
Following the very short demo, co-CEO and Founder of RIM Mike Laziridis took the stage and noted that one of the things RIM has worked with Adobe on was getting Flash developers to create apps for the PlayBook’s AIR platform that weren’t just content — entertainment was the implication — apps.
“You saw that first, [eUnity is] a very sophisticated application running on the device. It’s the same application that runs on the PC,” Lazaridis said.
Client Outlook told attendees at the Adobe event that it only took its developers two hours to get its eUnity application running on the PlayBook, because the software development kit (SDK) that RIM provided was so easy to use. For more watch the video of the short PlayBook demo from the Adobe MAX event yesterday: