In my experience advising clients in HIPAA breach litigation cases, one of the most important and challenging mandates for providers is to enforce policies and procedures across multiple technology platforms, devices, and a geographically distributed workforce.
The HIPAA Privacy Rule 45 CFR Part 160 and Subparts A and E of Part 164 provides that a covered entity must have appropriate administrative, physical, and technical safeguards to protect the privacy of protected health information. The HIPAA Security Rule (see 45 CFR Part 160 and Subparts A and C of Part 164) provides a covered entity must ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of all electronic protected health information the covered entity creates, receives, maintains or transmits by complying with various administrative, physical, and technical safeguards. Recent HIPAA breaches I have seen were not caused by a certified EHR, but instead caused by non-secure connected servers, mobile devices, and poorly trained people.
BlackBerry's M&A activity in EMM, security, and IOT are intended to address some of these needs. Last week the company announced that it is acquiring mobile cross platform company Good Technology for $425 million in cash. In April 2015 BlackBerry acquired WatchDox, a file security and Digital Rights Management (DRM) platform.
Despite the company's decreased consumer presence, my research into BlackBerry, Apple, and Android indicates that BlackBerry has an important edge in security and the BlackBerry Passport has important advantages for healthcare professionals in securely viewing images, typing text information accurately, and managing calendar schedules which are fundamental tasks for healthcare providers. Additionally, BlackBerry management has recently been speaking about it's healthcare reference architecture while giving a nod in its enterprise server platform to the fact that we live in a BYOD world.
Good across mobile platforms
BlackBerry provides capabilities including secure and encrypted voice, text, messaging, data and enterprise files. Good was just chosen by Gartner as the leading vendor in the 2015 High Security for Mobile Management report for capabilities such as app-level encryption, advanced data loss prevention and secure communication. According to BlackBerry CEO John Chen, "Our vision at BlackBerry is to provide a more secure enterprise platform for the connected world… " in vertical industries "sensitive to privacy and security." According to Chen, Good brings platform diversity since over 64 percent of the mobile activations last quarter were from Apple iOS devices. According to Chen, the combined companies will have the ability to serve a larger installed base of iOS, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry OS, Good will enable BlackBerry to add support for wearable devices.
Verticals sensitive to privacy and security
BlackBerry and Good have synergies in regulated industries and enterprise markets. Good is strong in commercial banking, aerospace, defense, and also claims market-leading customers in healthcare, manufacturing, and retail. BlackBerry has traditionally been strong in government, banking and legal and has seen growing acceptance in healthcare. BlackBerry's customers include ten of the top ten global banks and law firms as well as the Group of 7 (G7) and sixteen of the G20 governments.
BlackBerry's healthcare play
The BlackBerry Enterprise Server was recently adopted at providers such as Mackenzie Health. According to Richard Tam the Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer at Mackenzie Health, "we selected BlackBerry because we could manage BYOD devices including iOS, Android and BlackBerry including location and a secure wipe of lost devices from a single console. BlackBerry Passport has gained acceptance in the organization with some clinicians because its square screen geometry lends itself to better viewing of diagnostic images, and its precision in typing text notes and entering calendar information has been found to be superior."
Merger integration and execution challenges
BlackBerry's cross platform IOT and mobile security strategy combined with Good has merit according Forrester and Gartner. Now the companies must execute on a combined vision. The companies have competitors such as PluseSecur, Lookout and MobileIron's Mobile First Healthcare solution. But BlackBerry management expects to turn around Good's cash burn and turn it positive as BlackBerry did by eliminating operating redundancies. Good had less than 12 months of cash left at the time of its attempted IPO last year, which was later cancelled.
BlackBerry, it appears, intends to fuel future growth by extending its offerings in IOT, EMM, and industries such as healthcare.
