Motion Moves Into The Medical Field

The humble tablet PC is inspiring a new breed of medical office applications. And in the process, the tablet-PC industry is offering opportunities to VARs and ISVs who are anxious to enter the health-care space. At the center of the tablet revolution is a relatively new start-up, Motion Computing. Through a combination of products, partnering and strategic-support services, the Austin, Texas-based display-technology company is helping its partners package, sell and promote its applications. As a result, Motion is making waves and gaining ground with a new extended family of VARs and developers to promote its products.

That Motion's M-1300 product is a winning combination of tablet-PC features is a plus.

"Motion's tablet is better in a lot of ways than other tablets: It is lighter, faster and more on the cutting edge of design and technology," says Paul Hemminger, acting COO of NorthBase, a small Des Moines, Iowa-based group of physicians who developed a practice-management system called ProgressNote while they were still in med school. The system is used by doctors' office staffs to keep track of patient records, and to handle appointments, billing and insurance claims. "We found that Motion was the better product, and [we] liked their discount structure," Hemminger says.

But this isn't only about having a better mousetrap. Indeed, Motion knew that it needed to leverage its small sales force and recognized the value of the channel early on. This is doubly ironic, given that several of the company's key managers came from direct-champion Dell.

"We are focused on product leadership. We use a build-to-order model and provide unique product configurations just like Dell does," says Ralph Spagnola, vice president of sales and business development for Motion and a former PC executive for Dell, Wang and NCR. "The key difference is that we need to bring software to [vertical] markets to help with these applications," he adds.

Part of Motion's leverage model is helping independent software developers and health-care VARs with a series of initiatives that sound more like a software company than a notebook vendor. Motion helps to seed interest in tablets and provides reduced-cost units along with plenty of other resources to get developers off the ground. "We have six people devoted to our ISVs," Spagnola says. "That is pretty unique for a hardware company." So far, Motion has distributed more than 300 ISV kits. But the kits are just the beginning of the support chain for Motion. "We provide all sorts of daily support, feedback and forums to help our developers," Spagnola says.

Breaking Down the Barriers
Why is the health-care market such a big focus for Motion? Several reasons. The Holy Grail for health care has been a mobile point-of-care device. "The health-care industry has been looking for the right device for some time," Spagnola says.

And the health-care industry has found that device in the tablet PC. "The advantage of the tablet is that you gain flexibility by having software that does handwriting and voice recognition," Hemminger says. "This means that the medical community can eliminate paper charts as well as its dictation processes."

Second, the tablet removes the barrier of a raised laptop screen between patient and caregiver. "First, they tried desktops on carts, but these weren't very mobile and had the extra burden of a barrier between a worker and the patient," Spagnola says.

Third, tablets are useful because of their size. "It is the perfect hardware because it is portable, yet the screen is readable," Hemminger says. "You can't deliver this kind of application on a PDA--can you imagine reading a knee X-ray on a small screen?"

ProgressNote takes tablets to the next level to make its applications interactive with patients. "We have a co-marketing agreement with Motion," Hemminger says. "We provide solutions on its tablets and [Motion's] salespeople are showing the tablet with our application. It is a win-win for both of us."