Fujitsu Canada makes inroads in education and healthcare B2B Tablet Market

I guess there’s life and then there’s Fujitsu tablets being showcased to you in an old bank vault media room in the basement of a fairly high-end new hotel. That should give you some indication that Fujitsu intends to be a hard hitter in the Canadian B2B tablet market.

Peter Wolchak, the Editor of Backbone Magazine points out that 31% of Canadians intend to buy a tablet before year’s end.

Wolchak continues in his September editor’s letter after showing the basic scope of the tablet market: “But two years from now, when consumers and even corporate buyers think “tablet” they will picture an iPad. There will be one exception to this: vertical markets. There is promising work occurring in verticals such as education and healthcare and these typically centre on the more open Android platform”.

But what about the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550, a tablet based on Windows 7 OS, one that could get even better as Windows 8 begins beta testing?

Remember that in healthcare and education it’s likely the IT departments installed all Windows due to the challenging closed architecture nature of Apple. That’s especially in education, where electronic textbook versions happen to be more Microsoft compatible in more instances than not. Further, that software wouldn’t be currently designed for Android on a mass scale so in the B2B tablet world it makes more sense to continue using Windows-based tablets for the time being; opening the door for Fujitsu.

The other main difference between the iPad and Fujitsu is that it comes with a pen that students can use to write with for subjects like math and science where typing doesn’t do an effective job of note taking and even can record lectures in audio files. Granted, the iPad does have a pen accessory, but in a world of decreasing accessories in-store, it’s becoming a little bit difficult to find if you aren’t already ordering online.

Steve Rush of the all-boys St. Andrews College which adopted the Fujitsu tablet says: “Apps are cool but not a replacement for what I have here”. He also believed that this was the future of education- for this tablet allows for "educational moments" such as bringing up a news article, replaces the need to convert written notes to electronic notes, and can even reduce the need for parents to buy their kids a PC, tablet or laptop. 

In the healthcare arena, Dr. Michel Hebert of Kinlogix said that Fujitsu tablets are used for patient processing and save doctors lots of time especially in emergencies. He said that you need to offer doctors a wide variety of ways to collect information and that it replaces the previous inefficient process of record, scan, print and transfer. Further, the Fujitsu, just as all other medical computation devices require a degree of security according to government regulations that other tablets just don’t currently provide. When asked how many doctors use the pen, Hebert said that more than half do.

It’s a step forward towards what doctors eventually want to do: completely automate the previously time-consuming check-in process, and have access to information on the spot in real-time.

That’s not to say an eventual switch to the Apple IOS or Android isn’t in the cards- a Fujitsu representative did say that they were open to the consideration of other operating systems too for each technology brings different competencies to the table.

Perhaps those competencies could be x-raying and CAT scanning patients on the spot for immediate diagnosis with tablets, or further advances in out-of-hospital, remote and mobile homecare for patient beds are always a hot commodity to have in an already overtaxed Canadian healthcare system.