New pager-replacement Android and Apple iOS apps from Zipit Wireless, a Greenville, S.C.-based maker of wireless IP devices and software, not only add paging capabilities to smartphones, but allow hospitals to get a better handle on many forms of staff communication.

On Thursday, Zipit introduced the two apps, branded as Zipit Confirm, and also announced a significant partnership with Verizon Enterprise Solutions to provide secure voice-over-IP services for the company's Zipit Now ruggedized messaging devices.

The Zipit Confirm app is a free download, but requires a subscription to the Enterprise Critical Messaging Solution, a partnership between Zipit and Verizon Wireless that was launched at HIMSS11, with monthly service starting at $10 per user. The subscription provides access to the cloud-based Zipit Remote Administration Portal, or RAP, that tracks when messages arrive, what they say and whether the recipient opened the message.

"It gives you accountability that you don't get with pagers," says Michael Vitale, VP of sales at Zipit Wireless. "Because it has a full record of accountability, it becomes HIPAA-compliant."

This eliminates what Vitale calls the "page-and-pray" process and perhaps leads to safer care. For example, he says, the emergency department can know right away that the cardiac catheterization lab or STEMI team is ready for a patient in critical condition, helping to reduce door-to-balloon time for someone having a heart attack. "Today, with a pager, we don't know if someone received [the message]," Vitale says.

The same kind of readiness can apply to departments such as patient transport, labs and nutrition, making for more efficient operations throughout the hospital.

Vitale believes that the market for pager replacement in healthcare is huge because while other industries abandoned the once-ubiquitous belt accessories en masse years ago, this one hasn't. Zipit says that 58 percent of pagers still in use today are in healthcare – and that doesn't even include pagers on private networks.

But the service is more than just paging. The system also provides accountability for e-mails and what the company calls ZText, SMS that runs on internal Wi-Fi networks so users can send and receive texts in cellular dead spots such as hospital basements. The e-mail follows standard Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), providing controls and monitoring over alarms and sensors. "We can communicate with machines and alarm systems," Vitale says.

Smartphones do not have to be on the Verizon Wireless network to use the Zipit app, so the technology supports the bring-your-own-device trend, according to Verizon product manager Jeff Pierson, though the app is exclusive on Verizon Enterprise Solutions infrastructure. (Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone, while Verizon Enterprise Solutions is the business-to-business unit of the telecommunications powerhouse.)

Interestingly, the app initially is only available for Apple and Android, even though Vitale spent eight years at Research in Motion, whose BlackBerry line once dominated institutional smartphone deployments and still finds strength at the enterprise level. "We saw a decline in BlackBerry use," he says, particularly in healthcare, where physicians overwhelmingly seem to favor the iPhone. "We went where the demand has come from."

Still, Vitale would not rule out future apps for BlackBerry or Windows Phone.