Is it okay to submit multiple apps with roughly the same codebase?

The mistake you're making is one of many possibilities:

• Submitting the applications under your account, instead of the client's account
• Not submitting these applications through the B2B program and instead trying to submit them to the regular App Store
• Submitting these applications through the App Store (B2B program or not) instead of licensing the application to the hospital and advising the hospital how to set up an Enterprise distribution system

Otherwise:

1. Review guideline 2.20: Developers "spamming" the App Store with many versions of similar Apps will be removed from the iOS Developer Program

2. From the iOS Program Agreement:

Disclaimer: Stop and consider a moment that you're asking software developers for what is actually legal advice concerning what someone else thinks Apple will do.

P.S. Review criteria 22.9: Apps that calculate medicinal dosages must be submitted by the manufacturer of those medications or recognized institutions such as hospitals, insurance companies, and universities

Thanks for the reply, it really helps a lot. To clarify, yes we are planning to submit the app(s) with the client's account (in this example Beta Care's account), definitely not our own developer account. So I understand that we should not submit multiple apps with similar functionality with one account, but I still have some questions left:

Let's say Beta Care is a certified company for distribution of medicines and healthcare devices, and Hospital A is a very famous hospital that is also Beta Care's research partner, is it okay to release an app named "Hospital A Heathcare" with Beta Care's account, or do we must submit the app "Hospital A Healthcare" with Hospital A's account? How about if the app is named "Beta Care - Hospital A Service"? Do we need to provide Hospital A's certification documents and relevant papers in addition to Beta Care's?

Thanks.

Those questions may be best put to the involved parties to insure all (name) uses are approved, etc. What you learn then may direct the submittal process.

As for reusing same code base....happens all the time, I think.

So far all the involved parties (my team, Beta Care, Hospital A) don't have any problem with the naming of the app, the hospitals approve the use of their names in Beta Care's apps all okay. The only unknown factor left for us is if the App Store will require the hospital's certification documents or approval papers if Beta Care submit the app under the name of Hospital A, we want to get well prepared, but the process of getting hospital's certification documents and relevant papers may require some time, and we want to plan the naming of the app accordingly.

Unfortunately, the new forum policy makes it difficult to link to posts in the old forum that would show you what the rejection notice you'll receive is going to look like.

"the hospitals approve the use of their names in Beta Care's apps" doesn't matter. What matters is that's not how Apple wants the applications submitted.

Do you mean that Apple will not approve of apps named like "Hospital A Healthcare" from Beta Care's account, but that it wants such named apps submitted by Hospital A's account? Am I understanding this correctly? Thanks.

As for naming, get in early....add however many apps you need to cover the naming variations and then go with the one that bubbles up.

As for it being ok between whomever, that needs to be evidenced during submittal, to Apple, via the review notes, with time planned should Apple need more info, etc. Don't wait...don't assume, and don't use anything learned here other than anecdotally.

Another thing you might want to do is have the app distributed from an enterprise account, rather than the general Apple App Store.

From that vantage point, the hospitals and research partners could potentially create a legal entity so you can distribute the app from one Enterprise App Store. Of course, that may not be possible. Nevertheless, unless the App is going to be something the general population is going to use, it should probably not be distributed through the general Apple App Store. (One medical device company I worked for used TestFlight to distribute their App while in testing, and even for clinical trials, prior to any FDA approval. I haven't used Apple's TestFlight cpabilities, but that may also be an option.)

The other thing you can do, is create only one app, and customize it by changes to a configuration file specifying colors, or graphics for each different version so they are customizable via changes to a plist configuration file. I wouldn't want to presume how to tell you to refactor the differences, but from a source code standpoint it's much nicer to have a single code base and make changes via configuration files for each hospital or research organization that will want to use it.

If the hospital name does not have to appear in the icon or name of the app, then make it something more purposeful such as Hospital Services and let the user go through a configuration screen which is called one time at initial launch (or can be changed via a setting) that selects the correct graphic and backgrounds.

Several years ago I had thought about creating a customizable marketing app which would let the user select skins or marketing programs from a select list and add them to the menus the eventual users would see. Manage the skins and configurations on a remote server and provide local event information, including splash screens via web downloads to the documents directory (not sure if you can actually use a splash screen from outside the bundle, although with iS8 and later you can use your own NIB or configuration to show the splash screen, which could possibly use something from outside the bundle, but local to the app's sandbox).

Anyway, that's my $0.05 worth on th topic. Good Luck!