ControlUp's Tap-to-App Aims to End Clinician Login Delays

LAS VEGAS, NV – March 09, 2026 – In the fast-paced world of healthcare, every second counts. For clinicians, however, many of those precious seconds are often lost to a common but frustrating problem: waiting for technology. Today at the HIMSS 2026 conference, Digital Employee Experience (DEX) leader ControlUp, in an exclusive partnership with IGEL, unveiled a new capability aimed at reclaiming that lost time. The solution, called Tap-to-App, is an industry-first tool designed to measure and optimize the real-world login experience for clinicians on shared workstations, providing a level of insight that has long been missing in healthcare IT.

The Hidden Cost of Waiting: Quantifying the 'Visibility Gap'

For years, a significant disconnect has existed between IT departments and clinical staff. An IT team might see a backend virtual desktop login completing in a few seconds and report success. The clinician on the hospital floor, however, experiences a different reality. After tapping their badge for access, they often face a frustrating wait—sometimes 30 seconds or more—for their applications, like the Electronic Health Record (EHR), to become fully functional and usable. This chasm between backend metrics and frontline reality is known as the "visibility gap."

This gap is more than a minor inconvenience; it's a major contributor to clinician burnout. Research consistently shows that technology friction, inefficient workflows, and administrative burdens are primary drivers of stress in the medical field. When digital tools are slow or unresponsive, they add cognitive load and consume valuable time and emotional energy. Studies have linked excessive time spent on documentation and interacting with poorly optimized systems to higher rates of burnout among physicians and nurses. Each moment spent waiting on a loading screen is a moment not spent with a patient, reviewing a chart, or collaborating with a colleague.

The consequences extend directly to patient care. Slow system operations can introduce delays in accessing critical patient data, potentially impacting diagnoses and treatment plans. In a high-stakes environment, unresponsive technology can lead to errors, increase patient wait times, and erode the overall quality of care delivery. The cumulative effect of these seemingly small delays across a hospital system represents a significant drain on productivity and morale.

From Login to Usable: A New Metric for Healthcare IT

ControlUp’s Tap-to-App directly confronts this visibility gap by creating a new, clinician-centric metric: the actual time from a badge tap to a usable application. Developed in close collaboration with IGEL and available exclusively on IGEL OS, the solution provides an end-to-end view of the entire login process from the clinician's perspective.

By correlating data from the physical IGEL endpoint with the virtual desktop and application layers, Tap-to-App presents a single, unified dashboard. It shows IT teams precisely when an application is fully rendered and ready for input, not just when a virtual session has been established. This granular insight allows IT to finally see what clinicians have been experiencing all along.

“Clinicians know immediately when technology slows them down, but IT teams haven’t always had the full picture to explain why,” said Marcel Calef, Field CTO Americas at ControlUp, in the official announcement. “Tap-to-App shows exactly how long it really takes for applications and patient data to be ready after a clinician taps in. That visibility helps IT teams fix real issues faster and deliver a smoother experience for clinicians at the point of care.”

This marks a fundamental shift from reactive troubleshooting to proactive optimization. With precise data on where bottlenecks occur—whether at the endpoint, in the network, during profile loading, or at the application layer—IT teams can diagnose and resolve performance issues before they generate help desk tickets and disrupt clinical workflows.

“By working closely with ControlUp, we’re enabling end-to-end visibility into the tap-to-app experience—from the endpoint through to the virtual desktop session,” added Jason Mafera, Field CTO for Healthcare at IGEL. “This collaboration helps healthcare IT teams move from reacting to issues after the fact to proactively identifying and addressing experience gaps, so clinicians get the reliable performance they need every day.”

A Strategic Alliance Forging a Niche

The exclusive nature of the ControlUp and IGEL partnership is a calculated strategic move designed to create a powerful, differentiated offering in the competitive healthcare technology market. Their collaboration, which began in 2019, has deepened over the years, with ControlUp becoming an early and active member of the IGEL Ready program. This long-standing relationship has enabled the deep integration necessary for Tap-to-App to function seamlessly.

The exclusivity provides significant mutual benefits. ControlUp gains a dedicated channel into the specialized healthcare market, where IGEL has a strong foothold with its secure, lightweight operating system. With healthcare already accounting for over a quarter of its business, this allows ControlUp to further tailor its solutions for critical clinical workflows. For IGEL, the partnership enhances the value proposition of its OS, embedding a best-in-class DEX monitoring capability that competitors cannot easily replicate.

This joint solution stands apart from other tools in the market. While VDI providers like Citrix and VMware offer logon optimization features, and identity solutions like Imprivata provide fast authentication, Tap-to-App focuses on the crucial, often-ignored period after the initial login. It answers the question, "The user is in, but can they work?" This unique focus on application usability time, measured directly from the clinician's workflow, carves out a defensible niche that addresses a specific and acute pain point in healthcare.

Paving the Way for Autonomous Endpoint Management

The launch of Tap-to-App is not just about a single feature; it represents a significant step toward a broader industry trend: Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM). In healthcare, where IT teams are perpetually over-burdened with managing thousands of devices, ensuring HIPAA compliance, and defending against security threats, the shift to a more automated, self-healing IT environment is not a luxury but a necessity.

AEM leverages AI and automation to proactively detect, diagnose, and remediate endpoint issues, often before users are even aware of a problem. The goal is to create a digital workspace that largely runs itself, freeing up IT staff to focus on strategic initiatives rather than constant firefighting. This proactive posture is critical for ensuring clinicians have fast, reliable access to the tools they need to provide patient care.

Tools like Tap-to-App provide the essential data and intelligence that fuel an AEM strategy. By delivering real-time, actionable insights into the true user experience, it enables the creation of automated workflows that can identify a performance degradation, pinpoint the root cause, and trigger a remediation script. This evolution from passive monitoring to active, automated management is vital for building a more resilient, efficient, and clinician-friendly digital infrastructure. As healthcare continues its digital transformation, solutions that eliminate friction and empower providers will be instrumental in shaping a system that works better for everyone.