BlackBerry Plans Medical Tool for Its Passport Smartphone

By Ben Dummett 

TORONTO-- BlackBerry Ltd. said it plans to launch, early in the new year, a mobile diagnostic tool for its Passport device to allow doctors to securely access cancer patients' medical data from any location.

The new browser is the latest move in the Canadian smartphone maker's effort to win back core enterprise customers and is the first technology offering developed with NantHealth, the IT provider in which it acquired a minority stake this past April.

The new offering from Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry comes as it tries to revive slumping sales by developing mobile security software and services aimed at business customers, following a failed attempt last year to expand into the consumer market.

This browser "really highlights (BlackBerry's) advantage in mobile security" for the health-care sector and other regulated industries, John Chen, BlackBerry's chief executive, said in an interview. Industries such as health care face strict regulations on protecting confidential data.

The new browser will equip doctors with a mobile computer to help them quickly and accurately decide on the appropriate treatment for a patient, Patrick Soon-Shiong, NantHealth's chief executive said.

Currently, it takes weeks for a doctor to get back tests from a biopsy, so they may be forced to decide on treatment before seeing the test results, Mr. Soon-Shiong said. NantHealth's genome browser allows physicians to view and analyze test results as soon as they become available, he said.

California-based NantHeath's cloud-based technology is used in over 250 hospitals.

BlackBerry and NantHealth haven't specified an exact release date for the browser, which will come pre-loaded on BlackBerry's Passport smartphone.

BlackBerry is counting on sales of Passport to help it reach its goal of selling 10 million smartphones annually, the threshold the company says it needs to hit before it starts making money from the device business. It launched the device in the September and after two days had orders for more than 200,000.

Analysts, though, see the Passport as a niche product. They say the launch of the new Classic device, modeled after BlackBerry's once-popular Bold smartphone, will play a more deciding factor in the Canadian company's fate. That launch is on December 17.

BlackBerry hasn't disclosed its investment in NantHealth, whose biggest financial backer is the Kuwait Investment Authority, a sovereign-wealth fund that invested $250 million in the company in October. Other investors include a unit of Verizon Communications Inc., Celgene Corp. and Blackstone Group L.P.

Write to Ben Dummett at [e-mail]

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