How Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) Saved a Hospital

While there are plenty of people out there who despair over the notion of losing access to their Apple (AAPL) products, most usually do not consider the tech giant as a life-or-death proposition. But considering what it just did for Emory Hillandale Hospital, it may just have elevated itself to the “true necessity” range. Despite this, Apple stock still slipped fractionally in Thursday afternoon’s trading.

Emory Hillandale, part of the Emory Healthcare group, first took an interest in Apple products back in July, reports note. That was when the CrowdStrike (CRWD) outage hit that hindered or even outright shut down some operations. But Hillandale decided that there was another way around the CrowdStrike kerfuffle, and instead, decided to go with Apple devices running software from Epic Systems, which is the United States’ leader in electronic health records.

Now, Emory Hillandale will be the first hospital in the United States to run on Apple products, whether it be the iPad, the iPhone, the iMac, or the Apple Watch. Hillandale reportedly turned to Apple devices for several reasons—and hopefully Apple’s marketing division is paying attention because this is content on the hoof—including better battery life, critical advantages in cybersecurity and records protection, a decreased need for IT support, and even a more user-friendly operations profile.

Tokenized Shares

Meanwhile, Apple also looks to join a comparatively small class of stocks coming up here: the class of stocks that are traded on the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken. But Kraken will not be trading stocks. Rather, it will be trading digital tokens of Apple and more than 50 other stocks. The xStocks, as they are known, will trade on the Solana blockchain, reports note, and be backed up by shares held by Backed.

The tokens will apparently be redeemable at any time for the shares of stock in question, and is mainly geared toward overseas investors. Overseas from the United States, of course. But these tokens are set to provide “…cheaper, easier access to U.S stocks.” This is particularly the case given time zone issues; the market is only open at certain times, and the tokenized systems will be available outside of regular market hours. Regulation, however, will still come into play here.

Is Apple a Buy, Hold or Sell?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on AAPL stock based on 17 Buys, eight Holds and four Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 8.14% rally in its share price over the past year, the average AAPL price target of $228.65 per share implies 13.37% upside potential.

See more AAPL analyst ratings

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