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Pay-for-Play Interoperability, Texting in Healthcare, and Health IT Conferences – #HITsm Chat Highlights

Topic One: Is “pay-for-play” interoperability going to derail CommonWell’s goal of building an industry-wide, interoperable framework?

Topic Two: Will texting in health care become a main driver of #patientengagement? Are iOS iMessage texts HIPAA compliant?

Topic Three: Experts claim data breaches are inevitable for health systems. Agree? What can be done NOW to minimize #healthIT security risks?

Topic Four: What’s the next-best #healthIT event/conference you’re attending? Are there other health IT topics that deserve their own event?

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April 13, 2013 I Written By

Katie Clark is originally from Colorado and currently lives in Utah with her husband and son. She writes primarily for Smart Phone Health Care, but contributes to several Health Care Scene blogs, including EMR Thoughts, EMR and EHR, and EMR and HIPAA. She enjoys learning about Health IT and mHealth, and finding ways to improve her own health along the way.

Filed Under: EHR  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  HIE  HIPAA  mHealth
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Sending PHI Over SMS

I recently was talking with a doctor who told me about a healthcare communications company called YouCall MD. The doctor liked many of the features that YouCall MD provided. He loved that they would answer your Live Calls, transcribe a message to you and send you that message by SMS. Well, he loved all of it except the part that YouCallMD was using insecure SMS messages to send protected health information (PHI).

I wrote about this before in my post called “Texting is Not HIPAA Secure.” I know that many doctors sit on all sides of this. I heard one doctor tell me, “They’re not going to throw us all in jail.” Other doctors won’t use SMS at all because of the HIPAA violations.

While a doctor probably won’t get thrown in jail for sending PHI over SMS, they could get large fines. I think this is an even greater risk when sending PHI over SMS becomes institutionalized through a service like YouCallMD. This isn’t a risk I’d want to take if I were a doctor.

Plus, the thing that baffles me is that there are a lot of secure text message services out there. Using these services would accomplish the same thing for the doctor and YouCall MD and they wouldn’t put a doctor or institution at risk for violating HIPAA. Soon the day will come when doctors can send SMS like messages on their phones in a secure way and they won’t have to worry about it. I just think it’s a big mistake for them to be using their phone’s default SMS.

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February 26, 2013 I Written By

John Lynn is the Founder of the HealthcareScene.com blog network which currently consists of 15 blogs containing almost 5000 articles with John having written over 2000 of the articles himself. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 9.3 million times. John also recently launched two new companies: InfluentialNetworks.com and Physia.com, and is an advisor to docBeat. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can also be found on Twitter: @techguy and @ehrandhit.

Filed Under: Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Privacy
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New App Allows For HIPAA-Compliant Group Texting by Clinicians

John wrote previously on EMR and HIPAA about the need for HIPAA Secure Texting and a company he’s advising that does secure text messaging called docBeat.

Well, another new app called Medigram is being tested which will allow clinicians to send HIPAA-compliant text messages within a defined group. The app is currently in closed beta with docs at Stanford Hospital, Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital and the Palo Alto VA Hospital, according to iMedicalApps.com.

According to the company, Medigram meets not only HIPAA requirements but also privacy/security provisions in Subtitle D of HITECH.  It does so, in part, by using SSL connections between mobile apps and its servers, as well as NIST-approved 256-bit AES encryption to secure chat data.

Secure texting certainly seems like a good idea, given how mobile-friendly this generation of clinicians has turned out to be.  And it’s hard to argue Medigram’s core pitch, which is that texting is far more interactive than a pager. Given that a surprisingly large number of doctors still use pagers, improving on the model seems like a good thing.

My theory is that the app, if otherwise usable and bug-free, will be a big hit during its beta. If so, I expect to see HIPAA-compliant instant messaging turn up next. Smaller, presumably agile companies specializing in B2B messaging — such as HipChat, Trumpia and 24im — are logical candidates to develop such a utility. (This article outlines several other enterprise IM firms, just in case you want to dig deeper.)

Of course, there’s also Google and Microsoft, both of which have large IM bases. Perhaps creating a secure version of an existing product (such as Messenger) will be less of a marketing challenge than say, HealthVault.

Regardless, I’ll be quite interested to find out how the beta turns out — I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, here’s a video in which Medigram describes its product.

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June 11, 2012 I Written By

Anne Zieger is veteran healthcare consultant and analyst with 20 years of industry experience. Zieger formerly served as editor-in-chief of FierceHealthcare.com and her commentaries have appeared in dozens of international business publications, including Forbes, Business Week and Information Week. She has also contributed content to hundreds of healthcare and health IT organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies.

Filed Under: ARRA  EMR  Healthcare  Healthcare IT  Healthcare Social Media  HIPAA  mHealth  Privacy
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