Health Care: Apple Tablet Heading to Hospitals?

We already heard rumors about Apple entering the point of sale (POS) arena, but now there are whispers that Apple is looking to break into the health care vertical. With what? Why, none other than their alleged tablet, of course. Think it’s far-fetched? Don’t be too surprised. Read on for the details.

9to5Mac offers some interesting conjecture based on this writeup from TinyComb Tech News. The brass tax? Apparently, Apple has spent the last 6 weeks at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles trying to get doctors on board with a new product. Mum’s the word, but whispers and echoes say it’s the Tablet. It’s an interesting prospect, and Jason Wilk, author of the TinyComb article, seems nearly convinced.  Would Apple look to make their first major step into the health care vertical with this device, instead of directly pushing it out to the consumer? It’s a great question, but one that 9to5Mac doesn’t think is a likely “yes.”

Opportunities for VARs?

Arguably, there’s a lot of room for the Apple Tablet in the health care vertical. Even if the consumer gets first dibs, the tablet can easily leak over to the working world. 9to5Mac brings up an interesting point: a sick Steve Jobs last year may have seen so much inefficient use of computer hardware at the hospital he was in, a bit of genius was sparked within him and the Health Tablet became a very real idea. They put it coyly:

The iPhone has proven itself to be a pretty useful work horse as it is, let alone the medical / imaging review capabilities and extensive fully-illustrated anatomy ‘book’ applications. We shouldn’t forget that a few blood pressure and blood glucose attachments were also demoed for the iPhone.

On a lighter note, one would imagine a bored Jobs might think of some interesting refinements for a tablet if he happened to have one to play with while bed ridden. Some of us hope there will be some awesomely fun an interactive games. We’ll just have to wait and see, and we’ll know soon enough. Today, January 13 marks only two weeks away from the alleged January 27 announcement of the device.

This has huge potential to shake up channel strategy. VARs, if the rumor is shown to be true, how fast do you think your verticals will want to snatch up the device?