BlackBerry has announced that Grand River Hospital has chosen Blackberry 10 smartphones, BBM Protected and BES(R) 12, a multi-OSS EMM solution to enable secure communication for clinicians and staff. It is a significant contract for the Canadian company as Grand River offers critical care, rehabilitation services and supportive care to over 700,000 patients.
Enhanced security with BBM
The organization has a dual deployment model in which BlackBerry will be deployed for corporate purposes and staff members will be allowed to bring their own devices (BYOD).
BBM Protected is known for offering better security for communications to doctors and staff, as these messages contain private patient information, and this is why it has become the obvious choice of Grand River Hospital. Unlike other security measures, BBM Protected offers an extra layer of encryption to BBM messages, giving a familiar and dependable BBM interface to people around the world. BBM Protected is compatible with iOS, Android and BlackBerry smartphones.
Gary Higgs, chief information officer of Grand River Hospital, said, “We needed to give our physicians and staff a secure mobile communications tool for real-time collaboration about patient status.” Higgs said that after considering multiple options, they zeroed in on BBM Protected as it met all their requirements, such as security and being easy to use and platform-agnostic. According to Higgs, BlackBerry’s solutions such as BBM Protected and BES12 let the hospital maintain security and privacy of patient data along with giving better options to users with the tools needed to provide the best possible care to patients.
Analysts Neutral on BlackBerry
In the last quarter, BlackBerry posted mixed earnings, reporting $660 million in revenue, which was below the consensus estimate by 15.6%. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at 4 cents, compared to a consensus estimate for a loss of 4.3 cents per share. BlackBerry will post its first quarter fiscal 2016 (1QFY16) earnings on June 23, when analysts expect the Canadian firm to post 2.5 cents in losses on $704.3 million in revenue
Analysts, on an average, have a Neutral on the stock with 19 of 33 rating it as a Hold and 10 rating it as a Sell. The average price target on the Canadian firm is $9.29. On Monday, BlackBerry shares closed down 2.96% at $9.51, and year to date, the stock is down by almost 14%.
