MobileSmith, a strong advocate of mHealth and mHealth apps, maintains a mobile application development platform (MADP), offered under a SaaS model, which enables users to create iOS and Android apps “with no prior knowledge of software programming.”
Janna Badalian, Director of Marketing, told us that the company has experienced great interest from the healthcare sector and has seen “tons of use cases.” The company claims a few dozen customers. On its website it displays views of sites built using its system by organizations such as: UCLA Health, Wake Forest Baptist Health, Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, several other health-related entities and a number of businesses, e.g., Civitas Media (publishers of dozens of newspapers throughout the southeast and midwest.)
The company had previously been in the business of domain hosting and some limited SaaS based services for non-for-profits (operating under the name Smart Online, Inc.) but changed its strategy to emphasize its MADP primarily for healthcare about two-and-a-half years ago.
It is now at the stage of seeking to add clients among hospitals and other health-related entities. Its business concept is based on charging license fees related to the number of apps and number of users per client. It offers different pricing tiers based on number of users and also offers an enterprise license for an unlimited number of users.
Earlier this year the company also announced an agreement with Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR), for use of MobileSmith’s platform to develop iOS and Android apps throughout the naval organizations NAVAIR serves. The NAVAIR deal, Badalian explained, is a one-off arrangement and NAVAIR will run an instance of the MobileSmith platform in its own private cloud.
MobileSmith has a very active promotional effort, encouraging the spread of mHealth. It recently noted a study by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) that found that only 35% of healthcare providers are using any mobile apps, although many important organizations appear to be moving towards embracing mHealth.
Another area that MobileSmith has been promoting is the use of beacons and geofencing technology for solutions in segments such as healthcare and retail. This particular set of proximity and contextual marketing solutions is receiving increasing attention from hospitals, sports venues and large to medium sized retail enterprises. (See our article: “Signal 360 – Beacons; Their Progress And Issues” 10/5/14).
The company recently announced an agreement with Qualcomm’s Gimbal, Inc. (formerly Qualcomm Retail Solutions) to incorporate Gimbal beacon and geofencing capabilities into its platform. The Gimbal solution set of devices (beacons, blue-tooth low energy – BLE) and cloud system manager is smartphone-centric and is based on the iBeacon software specifications of iOS with an additional feature set. The company is advocating for the use of beacons in apps such as wayfinding within hospital buildings as an in-place “use case.”
Visit their website: www.mobilesmith.com
Photo by Webtreats via Flickr
Podcast Narration by Gene Guerrero
Podcast Music “On the Ground” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0