A Step-by-Step Guide to Planning Your Next Device Refresh in Healthcare

For healthcare IT leaders, few projects are as complex—and as important—as refreshing thousands of mobile devices across an organization. A poorly executed refresh can lead to downtime, clinician frustration, and ballooning costs. But with the right approach, refreshes can be seamless, cost-effective, and strategically aligned with your care delivery goals.

Here’s a step-by-step roadmap to help healthcare organizations get it right.

Step 1: Audit Your Current Fleet

The first step is visibility. Map your entire mobile device fleet: how old devices are, what operating systems are running, and emerging performance problems.

Look for early warning signs such as:

• Devices on unsupported OS versions
• Excessive battery replacements
• Frequently dropped connections or application crashes
• Rising IT support tickets tied to mobility issues

This baseline will help you prioritize which devices need immediate replacement and which can be phased out over time.

Step 2: Align with Clinical Priorities

Every refresh must tie back to clinical needs. Different care environments demand different device capabilities. For example:

• Home health teams often need lightweight iPhone with strong connectivity for accessing patient records on the go
• Hospital staff may benefit from iPad for charting, telehealth, and patient education at the bedside
• Specialty teams may use Apple Watch for secure messaging, alerts, and patient monitoring

By mapping technology needs directly to clinical goals, you’ll ensure the refresh delivers measurable value to patient care.

Step 3: Choose the Right Devices

Apple devices are a natural fit for healthcare. Their security, reliability, and ease of use reduce friction for clinicians. Many already use Apple devices personally, minimizing training needs and accelerating adoption.

IT leaders should evaluate not only the current capabilities of devices, but also their potential to support future use cases—such as AI-driven diagnostics, advanced telehealth, or integrated wearables.

Step 4: Plan for Deployment Logistics

This is often the most underestimated part of a refresh. Coordinating thousands of devices across locations, ensuring they’re configured correctly, and delivering them to clinicians without disruption is a massive undertaking.

Stratix specializes in this challenge. The automation systems we use during staging and kitting ensure devices arrive ready to use. That means clinicians can unbox, power on, and immediately begin working—with no IT bottlenecks.

Step 5: Build in Ongoing Support and Lifecycle Management

A refresh is not the finish line. Devices will break, need repairs, or require OS updates. Without a long-term plan, IT teams quickly find themselves back in firefighting mode.

Stratix provides 24x7x365 support, repair services, and lifecycle management to keep fleets healthy for the long haul. That continuity ensures devices stay secure, functional, and aligned with organizational strategy.

Pro Tip: Treat Refreshes as Continuous Strategy, Not One-Time Projects

The most successful healthcare organizations treat device refreshes as part of their IT roadmap—not as an emergency project every few years. By budgeting and planning for refresh cycles proactively, leaders ensure clinicians always have the tools they need to deliver the best possible care.

Partnering with Stratix: Your Apple-Certified Advantage

Healthcare organizations don’t have to navigate device refreshes alone. Partnering with Stratix, an Apple Premium Business Partner, ensures every aspect of your refresh is executed with precision, efficiency, and security.

Stratix brings decades of experience managing large-scale device deployments for hospitals, home health agencies, and specialty care teams. From initial planning to ongoing lifecycle management, Stratix handles the heavy lifting so your IT staff can focus on strategy, not troubleshooting.

Key benefits of partnering with Stratix include:

• Seamless Apple integration: Leverage the full power of iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch with devices pre-configured for healthcare workflows
• Comprehensive lifecycle management: From repairs to software updates, Stratix ensures devices remain secure, compliant, and operational throughout their lifecycle
• Expert consulting: Stratix helps align technology choices with clinical priorities, ensuring every device adds measurable value to patient care

By working with Stratix, healthcare organizations can turn refreshes from a logistical headache into a strategic advantage, delivering modern, reliable technology to clinicians and safeguarding patient outcomes.

The Takeaway

Refreshing devices in healthcare may seem daunting, but with a structured plan—and the right partners—it becomes a strategic opportunity. By pairing Apple’s powerful ecosystem with Stratix’s proven mobility management services, organizations can simplify the refresh process, protect patient data, and empower care teams to focus on what matters most: patients.

Ready to plan your refresh? Watch our webinar and click here to learn more about Stratix services for Apple.