Apps are all the rage in the consumer space, but people often forget about the thousands of mission critical applications that never hit an app store like the BlackBerry® App World™ storefront. These enterprise applications can increase productivity, improve communications, or in the case of Claron Technology’s Nil Medical application for BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, potentially help save lives.

Recently, Claron Technology introduced a new extension to their Nil family of medical imaging viewers to support anytime, anywhere web-based viewing of a full range of medical images. The Claron Nil application for BlackBerry PlayBook, which is available in BlackBerry App World (but more likely to be deployed through tools such as BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion and the ‘work channel’ of BlackBerry App World), includes both NilRead for diagnostic applications and NilShare for referring to a physician.

The Nil app for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet provides one-click, ultra-fast access to the innovative image viewer running either on Claron’s NilCloud or a medical facility’s dedicated Nil server. There is a clear need for mobile access to medical information, as physicians and other medical staff are constantly on the move – even within their own facility. Moreover, with home-based and Web viewing of PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications Systems) having increased 3 to 4 times between 2005-2008 with no signs of stopping, mobility is an increasingly critical requirement for successful PACS deployments.

The information within these apps needs to be not only secure, but easily updated, automatically pushed out, monitored, and archived, which is facilitated via the BlackBerry platform. In an environment where the transfer of vital information is managed through technology, BlackBerry technology provides a secure communication infrastructure for health-care providers. As Claudio Gatti, co-founder and co-CEO of Claron put it, “BlackBerry smartphones are widely used in the medical environment, and we anticipate that the new Nil app for the BlackBerry PlayBook will be very popular among IT managers and physicians in today’s fast-paced, HIPAA-conscious world.”

With this launch, Claron joins a number of other major healthcare technology vendors like Epocrates, Horizon (McKesson) and Allscripts who are all leveraging the BlackBerry platform to mobilize their offerings. In fact, BlackBerry solutions for Healthcare have been a strong part of our overall enterprise offering for many years, and as Peter Ng, Sr. Director, Alliances Strategy & Business Development at Research In Motion® (RIM®) stated: “We’re pleased that Claron is expanding support for the BlackBerry platform with their new Nil app for the BlackBerry PlayBook which offers Nil customers an ultra-portable design, a high resolution display for sharp viewing, and delivers the responsive performance needed for handling medical images”

What mission critical applications does your organization run on BlackBerry technology? What applications do you see becoming increasingly portable? Are there different application requirements for tablets vs. smartphones? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

This year, Research In Motion® (RIM®) sponsored the 2012 SMB 150 awards coordinated by SMB Nation. These are the second annual SMB 150 awards, which seek to recognize top performing small and medium-sized business technology partners based on both community voting and a panel of judges. The awards have come to a close and the winners have been announced on the SMB 150 website.

It’s been our pleasure to work and partner with small business communities to solve challenges around mobility, and to help businesses grow and succeed. Last Wednesday, Bryan Lee, Senior Director, Enterprise Accounts and I attended the awards gala for the 2012 SMB 150 awards and we were very excited to meet this year’s winners, including international winners who traveled all the way from Brazil, the U.K. and Australia to receive their awards. We enjoyed chatting with the winners and attendees in person to explore their unique perspectives on small business and technology. My most memorable moment of the evening was when one of the award recipients’ accepted his award from a remote location via BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet video conference.

My personal favorite tool that we’ve put together is the SmartBuilder for BlackBerry. SmartBuilder pieces together a personalized mobile solution set based on your business needs, which you can input by taking a short survey within the tool. We’ve had fantastic feedback and are often working to improve our offerings for the SMB community, so please share what the specific challenges and successes have been for your business this year!

Also worth taking a look at in order to take your SMB to the next level are the following:

• BlackBerry® Enterprise Server Express (free)
• BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets to save costs and enable a mobile office
• BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) for both internal communication and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• BlackBerry® Business Cloud Services to help integrate your Microsoft® Office 365 service and your BlackBerry smartphones

How has your SMB leveraged BlackBerry smartphones, tablets, or services to help grow your business and handle communication, collaboration, or CRM? Share in the comments below!

Government Day at BlackBerry World™ is taking place on April 30th, 2012 in Orlando, Florida, and targets the unique needs of government organizations with content that highlights how BlackBerry solutions are used to help mobilize teams, streamline operations and efficiently deliver public service.

We have a great line up of speakers and sessions:

• Scott Totzke, Senior Vice President of BlackBerry Security at Research In Motion Limited (RIM®) will provide a welcome address and opening remarks
• Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of RIM will deliver an executive address
• Michael K. Brown, Director of Product Management at RIM will provide more insight about how RIM addresses the security and mobility challenges for public sector organizations
• Alan Panezic, Vice President of Enterprise Product Management & Marketing at RIM will speak about how BlackBerry solutions are meeting the needs of governments
• A variety of government customers representing North America, Asia Pacific and Latin America will share their experiences with deploying BlackBerry solutions and apps

Government Day is on us: all Government and Public Sector customers who have a full conference pass for BlackBerry World 2012 can attend Government Day at no additional charge.

For your calendars: Government Day will be held on Monday April 30, 2012 beginning at 8:30 a.m. EST.

For more information about BlackBerry World 2012, check out http://www.blackberryworld.com. We’ve also got more details on BlackBerry solutions for government.

Do you work in the government or public service? What are some of the mobility challenges that you’re currently facing? Share in the comments below.