Apple devices to supply the Georgia Hospital in a first for the USA
On Wednesday, April 30, 2025, a customer will wear an Apple MacBook Pro laptop in front of an Apple Store in Walnut Creek, California, USA.
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Apple Devices will operate a hospital in Georgia, a premiere for the company because it continues its advance into the health sector.
Emory Healthcare announced on Thursday that the Emory Hillandale Hospital will be the first US hospital, the Apple products such as the iPad, the iPhone, the Apple Watch, the IMAC and the Mac Mini. The devices will also integrate into software from EPIC, the leading provider of electronic health records in the nation.
Hillandale uses Apple products because they are user-friendly, need less IT support, offer cyber security advantages and have long-lasting hardware and battery life, emory executives told CNBC.
Since this is a new territory for the health system, Emory will carefully monitor the devices to ensure that they improve the company's quality of care.
“It can surely be a game changer that was not carried out anywhere else in the country,” said Dr. Joon Lee, CEO of Emory Healthcare, in an interview. “And like everything else, it won't be without challenges, but it really opens the door for several options.”
Emory Healthcare is an academic health system in Georgia that operates 10 hospitals and supports around 26,400 employees. The facility in Hillandale is a community hospital with 100 beds on the outskirts of the Greater Atlanta area.
“At Apple, we believe in the power of technology to improve life,” said Dr. Sumbul Desai, Vice President of Health at Apple, in a statement to CNBC. “We are enthusiastic that the Emory Hillandal Hospital Apple products uses to ensure extraordinary care – since doctors and nurses should have the best technology in the world to serve their patients.”
The health system's interest in using more Apple products was partially inspired by the major Crowdstrike Failure, the company, including emory, rocked in July last July, said Dr. Ravi Thadhani, Executive Vice President for Health Affairs of Emory University.
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According to Thadhani, more than 20,000 of the health system devices were “paralyzed” by a faulty update for crowdstrike software, but in particular all their Apple products still worked. After the failure, the managers of Apple and Epic, emory, asked the managers from Apple and Epic and explore deeper integration.
“They were already working together, you could get epic on an Apple device, but it wasn't quick and it wasn't seamless,” said Thadhani. “And so they came, they got here.”
Epic is emory electronic health records or honor, provider. Honor is digital versions of the medical history of a patient updated by doctors and nurses. The software is often referred to as the “central nervous system” of a health organization, said Seth Howard, Executive Vice President for Research and Development of Epic.
Howard said that Epic has worked with Apple for many years and has already provided apps for the iPhone in 2010. Last year the company published the EPIC on Mac, which made its complete application suite available on Apple's computer operating system.
“The Epic on Mac project was really an expansion and a natural next step for us on this trip with Apple,” said Howard in an interview.
Emory was an early adopter.
Before Emory decided to trigger Apple devices in an entire hospital, it carried out a smaller pilot on a floor of a facility. Thadhani said that the feedback from doctors and nurses was “phenomenal”, which gave the health system trust in order to expand the scope.
If the introduction to Hillandale is a success, Lee said that the health system could use Apple products in other emory institutions in the future.
“Certainly our intention and hope is that it will show a difference and that we can expand and that we will also be a model for other health systems across the country,” he said.
