Set to become available through AT&T next Thursday (8/12), Research In Motion unveiled the 9800 Torch yesterday in Manhattan. The slick, slider smartphone boasts a touch screen and a QWERTY keyboard, will retail for $199, and promises to be the first device to run the Blackberry 6 OS. Read »

San Francisco-based pMDsoft is touting its new, native iPad charge capture application as a first-of-its-kind offering for the healthcare industry. Read »

Apple did a good job with the iPad's launch, resurrecting consideration of tablet computers by more than a few in healthcare who had been burned by lesser tablets in the past. But as we recently saw with the unveiling of Cisco's enterprise-friendly Cius--and the runaway success of the Android operating system in general--competition among tablet makers is heating up fast. Read »

The second busiest acute care hospital in New Hampshire is beefing up its wireless network for mobility applications in an effort to keep up with rapid organizational growth and an influx of new mobile technologies. Read »

Healthcare organizations can expect to be hearing from San Antonio, Texas-based AirStrip Technologies, now that the developer of virtual real-time remote patient monitoring technology has received FDA clearance to market its mobile medical software applications, including AirStrip RPM, AirStrip RPM Critical Care and AirStrip RPM Cardiology. Read »

Can a lensless microscope that works with either a mobile device or a PC help test for malaria, HIV and tuberculosis? That's what UCLA researchers intend to discover through studies being conducted in Africa this summer. Read »

Back in the early days of the HIMSS Medical Banking Project's Cooperative Open-source Medical Banking Architecture & Technology (COMBAT) Initiative, the late John Hardin and I began exchanging emails with Tim O'Reilly, a bastion of the open source movement, arguing the case for the intersection of open source, open standards and medical banking technologies. Today, healthcare is a major theme of his open source connection, OSCON 2010, which runs July 19-23, 2010. Andy Oram has an excellent track summary over at his O'Reilly radar blog which I will not recreate here. Read »

The healthcare industry's need for technology that streamlines patient identification, medication administration, documentation, and inventory and asset management are spawning opportunities for barcode scanning apps on smartphones. One company heeding the call is Newark, Calif.-based Socket Mobile, a provider of mobile productivity solutions that just expanded compatibility of its Socket Bluetooth Cordless Hand Scanner (CHS) Series 7 with BlackBerry smartphones, including the Bold, Curve, Pearl, Storm and Tour. Read »

With roughly 6,000 mobile apps targeting health care consumers, according to a recent Los Angeles Times report, you might think people have had their fill of software that offers advice and information on health topics ranging from how to find a doctor, to emergency first aid protocols, to exercise instructions. But they haven’t—at least not according to the mobile app developers, who keep coming up with inventive ways to package new consumer health offerings. Read »

MoneyGram International announced the expansion of its mobile transfer service to approximately 40,000 agent locations in the United States. The global money transfer company offering expansion follows its pilot program of select California and Hong Kong agent locations to 40 million Philippines SMART phone users. Read »