strategy of communication between a healthcare businesses and a patient groups

Deliver better healthcare through effective use of secure mobile messaging

As promotional specialists, healthcare marketers are tasked with the mission of conveying the value of specific treatments and products to the public while also influencing patients to see a compelling need to use them. Understanding this communication between a healthcare businesses and a patient group is an essential element in developing a successful marketing strategy.

To build this strategy, marketers identify a patient group, understand their needs and interests, and then decide which channels will be most effective to reach those patients and how to leverage each channel. Potential channels of communication include professional referrals, internal marketing, external marketing, branding, Internet marketing, and public relations.

While understanding how to leverage these channels is an essential piece of success, creating the right message that resonates with the target patient audience will have a profound impact on elevating the success of marketing efforts. For this reason, it is vital that marketers specifically tailor the details of each message using predictions of patient behavior. By doing so, marketers ensure that a product or treatment is framed under the proper context and increase the probability that a patient will see their call to action as a successful course of treatment.

So is this really how medical marketers should elevate their messaging? Here are three reasons why utilizing patient behavior predictions can healthcare marketers develop authentic break-through messaging that effectively communicates to their patients the benefits of a product.

1) Understanding patient behavior is extra insurance for developing an empathetic tone within messaging

By taking time to understanding the pains, worries, fears, and expectations of patients, marketers gain valuable insights into the psychographics of their target group. Asking questions to understand what perceptions and biases the clientele already hold will also give key insights into the decision-making process that a strategy attempts to leverage.

As they gather this information, marketers create an empathetic foundation upon which messaging can be developed. By seeking first to understand the thoughts and feelings of the patients, marketers also create an early detection system that will quickly weed out any message that could be interpreted as insensitive, purely profit-driven or callous.

2) Use patient predictive behavior to expand a patient’s perspective

While marketers should definitely use messaging to demonstrate to patients that they understand the patient’s situation, they miss out on a key opportunity if the messaging does not extend beyond basic empathy. After a patient’s situation has been treated with the appropriate sensitivity, messaging should move to strengthen the confidence a patient has in the entire treatment process, providing information that surpasses the individual’s limited perspective.

In this sense, marketers can convey valuable medical information in common language that will help the patient understand all of the care and effort being take towards their treatment. For example, by explaining the training that a medical staff goes through, such as diagraming the testing process that occurs with each new drug, marketers help patients understand the bigger picture of health intervention.

3) By creating a journey map for each specific patient, marketers understand the big picture of each patient’s illness

One specific tactic of predicting patient behavior is to map out the patient’s entire medical journey. By beginning with the initial steps of symptom detection, awareness and diagnosis, and eventually reaching successful treatment and health restoration, marketers identify the specific scenarios a patient will pass through and gain a better understanding of what the patient has already experienced in addition to future challenges.

Taking a deeper look at these scenarios will also help marketers to evaluate and determine which points of the journey are most difficult for the patient and where key decisions are made. Without a journey mapping technique, marketers run the risk of promoting a product too late in the patient’s treatment cycle or too soon. Finding the right timing can strengthen the marketing pitch by positioning the message as organically as possible within the course of treatment. With big data becoming a bigger player across the medical industry, developing data-driven journey maps can help marketers produce sharper insights like never before.

With these clear benefits and many others, understanding and predicting patient behavior helps marketers develop accurate, effective messaging that clearly communicates the value and purpose of a product.

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Importance of 2-way text communication between physicians and patients

There are no government regulations specific to text communication between patient and provider. As such, the same general rules for privacy and security that apply for any other phone texting exchange hold for texting about a patient or directly with a patient. To address the implications of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), the privacy rule restricts who has access to protected health information (PHI), while the security rules loosely define parameters for preventing breach of PHI.

In any communication between patient and provider, both parties should presumably have access to any PHI—satisfying the privacy rule. However, an important consideration is ensuring that the 2-way communication by text message is actually between the intended parties. In other words, be certain that your messages are reaching only the desired recipient.

HIPAA compliant HL7 Messaging

Establish PHI Privacy Safeguard

In general, it is advisable to ensure that privacy is maintained by confirming the patient’s identity and desire to communicate by text message prior to engaging in an initial text communication. You might have your first message exchange with the patient in clinic, for example. At that time, you can ask if others have access to the patient’s mobile device and gain assurance that the patient is comfortable with the level of security afforded by text messaging.

If communication is ever initiated by an unknown contact, you should not share PHI until you have confirmed the identity of the person face to face or by phone call to be certain that the unknown contact is, in fact, the patient or someone the patient has indicated may communicate directly with you and that patient wishes to communicate by text message.

Under these circumstances, it is of utmost importance that the patient has an expressed desire to use phone texting to communicate about ongoing medical care, and is comfortable receiving and sending texts rather than more traditional forms of communication. However, this does not necessarily mean that security standards under HIPAA will have been met.

Employ Safe Harbor De-identification

As defined by HIPAA, covered entities (ie, providers, institutions, etc) are expected to use “appropriate administrative, physical and technical safeguards” to ensure privacy of PHI.1 This description is vague and implies technological neutrality. In other words, HIPAA does not require, and the US Department of Health and Human Services does not endorse, any specific technology or security standards for the protection of PHI.

Therefore, providers may use any level of encryption, along with other technological (eg, operating system passwords) and physical (eg, screen shields) methods to enhance protection against an information breach.2 While the vague description may seem cumbersome, there is an easier method to maintain HIPAA security rule compliance: de-identification.

If you remove all personal identifiers (Table) from the information you are transmitting, than you are providing sufficient and appropriate privacy and security measures under the Safe Harbor method.4 Under HIPAA, the Safe Harbor rule lists 18 personal identification markers that should be eliminated from any communication to prohibit the possibility of a person’s identity being linked to original data.4 When information contains no specific identifying information (ie, de-identified), it is no longer “protected” health information under HIPAA. De-identification of any transmitted information is surely the safest, least expensive, and most effective means for maintaining compliance, particularly if a patient has initiated the communication and identified text messaging as a preferred means of communication.

Take All Necessary Safety Precautions

Since patients may not be aware of HIPAA rules, it is reasonable for you to inform your patients of potential concerns (eg, that you are not using advanced security features in the communication) when they initiate or transmit their own PHI. However, you are responsible for the information that you transmit or disclose. In effect, any PHI on your device is your responsibility, and therefore, you should optimize features and practices such as operating system passwords, remote phone deactivation, deleting of old messages from the device (and storage/backup systems), and disabling message previewing.

For the most part, text messaging should be considered safe and effective. There are many ways that texting can improve communication between physicians and providers, and improve patients’ access to healthcare at little or no cost to them. In general, providers can maintain Security Rule compliance by avoiding the use of PHI in messages. However, this should not preclude much of the dialogue that is “text appropriate.”

A message like “are you feeling any better?” has minimal risk to patient or provider. Conversely, it is quite obvious that you should not be transmitting messages like “Your viral count is down.” Clearly, if benign communication becomes sensitive or worrisome during a text exchange, then this should prompt a switch to a telephone call or, if necessary, schedule an office visit.

Ultimately, all levels of security can be breached—consider that both the US Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency have been hacked within the last 2 years. If hackers want to break into a secure messaging system, they will. Therefore, clinicians would be best served to remove all identifiers from all messages, all the time, and limit use of text messaging for routine, benign communication with patients.

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what the latest update on hipaa privacy rules mean for healthcare providers

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights has updated its HIPAA Privacy Rule guidance for healthcare professionals to help clear up confusion about allowable disclosures of protected health information to spouses, relatives, and patients’ loved ones.

The majority of healthcare professionals are aware that the HIPAA Privacy Rule permits them to share the protected health information of a patient with a relative or loved one. However, the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting incident revealed that many healthcare professionals are unsure about how the HIPAA Privacy Rule

HIPAA compliant HL7 Messaging

OCR has confirmed that the Privacy Rule permits a covered entity to “share [PHI] with an individual’s family member, other relative, close personal friend, or any other person identified by the individual, the information directly relevant to the involvement of that person in the patient’s care or payment for health care.” OCR has also confirmed that covered entities are allowed to disclose relevant information “to notify, or assist in the notification of (including by helping to identify or locate), such a person of the patient’s location, general condition, or death.”

The recipient can be a “patient’s family member, relative, guardian, caregiver, friend, spouse, or partner,” but also any other individual that is a nominated personal representative of the patient. A personal representative of a patient must, as far as the Privacy Rule is concerned, be treated as the individual for purposes such as exercising the patient’s Privacy Rule rights, including providing access to their health information. There are limited exceptions, which are detailed in 45 CFR 164.502(g).

OCR has confirmed that covered entities are permitted to share a patient’s PHI with same-sex partners, and explains that the list of potential recipients of PHI is in no way affected by an individual patient’s sex or gender identity, and neither by the sex or gender of the potential recipient.

OCR also sought to confirm who can be classed as a personal representative of the patient, saying “the Privacy Rule generally looks to state laws governing which persons have authority to act on behalf of an individual in making decisions related to health care.”

For example, if a state grants legally married spouses health care decision making authority for each other, a covered entity would be in violation of the Privacy Rule if access to the patient’s information was not granted if requested by a spouse, regardless of the sex of that individual.

While the covered entity should seek permission from the patient concerned prior to sharing information, in cases when the patient is incapacitated or not available, covered entities should use their professional judgement if the sharing of information is in the patient’s best interest. Should a patient be deceased, information can be shared with a person who has been involved in the patient’s care or who has made payment for medical services prior to the patient’s death.

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5 things to keep in mind for secure communications strategies for a mobile healthcare

Secure texting in the healthcare environment should be thought of as one piece of a much larger communications puzzle

Since the first mobile phone call was placed from a New York City street corner in 1973, mobile technology has taken the world by storm. Billions of consumers around the globe use smartphones, for everything from shopping to navigating to communicating in a variety of ways.

In fact, the use of phones for actual talking is on the decline. In 2011, nearly a third of American adults preferred texting to voice calls. In 2015, use of texting by Americans far outweighed voice calls (an average 26 minutes per day texting versus 6 minutes on voice calls). It’s easy to see why: Texting is fast, private and efficient. For these reasons and many others the use of texting is common in healthcare as a powerful way for clinical teams to communicate.

Deliver better healthcare through effective use of secure mobile messaging

However, because healthcare is very different from other industries, this can pose problems. Federal regulations require that personal health data be protected via secure communications. The challenge for healthcare organizations is that although many of the popular messaging apps and services that consumers regularly use do offer encryption, they do not meet the interoperability and flexibility needs—or the strict standards—of the healthcare environment. There are more than 100 companies that offer secure texting options, but any organization considering one of these platforms should make sure that they can offer everything needed to improve care team coordination.

Integrated Tools

The conversations are now focusing on a bigger picture: how to use smartphones as an integrated tool within the overall communications infrastructure, not as a separate device that just needs encryption to be compliant. Security is the first step, but there are a number of other issues to consider.

For instance, in order to quickly share actionable information, clinicians need information at their fingertips for the entire staff directory, including who the right on-call physician is. This kind of information is often housed in multiple locations requiring extra time to look up, and may be outdated or incorrect.

Or what about a situation in which someone needs to get a message to a patient’s entire care team for treatment planning or discharge approval? The ability to send a single message to the right group can mean avoiding a lot of wasted time that could impact patient care, staff and patient satisfaction, and the hospital’s bottom line.

Data breaches and ransomware attacks are also on the rise, costing millions in fines and reputational damage, so security is a top concern. But don’t stop there: Secure texting in the healthcare environment should be thought of as one piece of a much larger communications puzzle.

In the past, departments have solved their own challenges along the way with point solutions that were not designed to work as part of an enterprise-wide infrastructure, leaving many hospitals struggling to cobble together clinical communications from different systems. Organizations may have good individual puzzle pieces to fit a particular need, yet those pieces don’t always fit together across an organization.

It’s important to consider patient monitoring, critical test results, nurse call, code calls, and more when designing a communications plan. These systems need to talk to each other and enable staff to easily access them. If not, you’re potentially wasting your time and money, and missing an opportunity to improve patient care and satisfaction.

Enterprise-Wide System Needs

Purchasing an enterprise-wide system can seem daunting. There are so many things to consider from security to interoperability to budget. But in the end an enterprise system can save your hospital time and money by creating economies of scale and addressing multiple challenges with fewer solutions. The efficiency improves when the need for every department to have their own system is eliminated.

Present day communication challenges of hospitals have evolved well beyond just the benefits that secure text messaging on its own can provide. There is a need for communication solutions that are designed specifically for healthcare’s complex environment and that can integrate information from a wide variety of sources and quickly deliver that information to the people who need it. Effective communication among technology systems, doctors, nurses, other staff, and patients is a critical part of care delivery. Think beyond just texting as you plan for the future.

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encryption techniques for patient records in the healthcare industry

The days of using primarily paper patient files are on the decline. Electronic patient record use is now widespread. While the electronic medical records make it easy to store, update and enter information, unauthorized individuals may also make use of the records. Consider these encryption techniques used in the health care industry for patient data.

Hashing Encryption

Hashing encryption is a common way of encrypting data that is included in a data set. Health care involves the collection of a lot of information, so this is an ideal method for keeping patient data secure. In the hashing method of encryption, a unique signature of a fixed length is attached to the data. The hashes are created with an algorithm or a hash function that is encoded into the software. This method of encryption is highly resistant to attempts at unauthorized access.

Learn More about Medical Data

In this day and age, the protection of sensitive patient data is paramount. Earning a degree in nursing informatics will prepare you for the data-intensive aspects of the medical and healthcare industries. Nurses must be able to accurately record patient data, such as vital signs, doses and timing of administration of medication and patient complaints. This type of a degree will allow you to combine your nursing skills with the accurate entry and analysis of patient data.

Symmetric Encryption

The use of symmetric encryption for patient data requires the implementation of a private key. The sender uses the encryption key to transmit a secured message. This can be useful if one physician needs to transmit information about a patient to another physician. It is helpful for sharing lab results among members of a care network or team. The receiver must have the encryption key in order to decode the message.

Asymmetric Encryption

In asymmetric encryption techniques for patient data, programmers or transmitters set up a public key to encrypt the information. A private key is required in order to decode the data. This avoids the problem of having to share the private key between the sender and receiver. Each user or receiver of the data has his or her own private key. Each access attempt can be tracked by key usage.

The Healthcare Information Privacy and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires that patient data be protected. Encryption techniques are one of the leading defenses against preventing unauthorized access of a person's confidential information. Hacking methods change frequently, and so should your encryption. Earning a degree in nursing informatics will help to keep you up-to-date on these techniques.

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patient follow up and mobile devices

How can physicians begin to leverage the 247 million Americans who using healthcare mobile applications?

A new study finds that the increase in people using their mobile devices to monitor their health can also help them adhere to a physician’s advice.

According to a study by Mobile Future and Infield Health, the wireless pill bottle, a device that digitally monitors the amount of pills in a bottle and can send Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) -compliant, text or phone reminders to patients to take their medicine, increases adherence to 95%.

Also, medical text message reminders can increase medication adherence by 10%, double smoking cessation, and save diabetes patients more than $800 a year.

Deliver better healthcare through effective use of secure mobile messaging

“Consumer demand for wireless digital health tools is dramatically improving medical outcomes and reducing health costs,” says Mobile Future member Infield Health CEO Doug Naegele.

The study finds that by 2018, the mobile health industry’s ability to connect with patients has the potential to save the United States $36 billion in healthcare costs. There is already an increasing number of seniors using smartphones (77%) and 42% of hospitals are already using digital health technology to treat patients.

According to the study, 247 million Americans hae downloaded a health app. The student estimates that remote patient monitoring using mobile devices will save the United States $36 billion in healthcare costs by 2018.

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top 3 secure ways to enable doctor patient communication via messaging

Deliver better healthcare through effective use of secure mobile messaging

Since 2008, the data gathered from Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) has enabled hospital facilities to have a standard set of measures for reporting the overall level of patient satisfaction. The importance of tracking and understanding patient satisfaction should not be minimized as it is highly correlated with desired outcomes such as:

• Happier patients
• Lower mortality
• Decreased readmission
• Improved patient outcomes

A key way to improve patient satisfaction is by providing doctors and nurses with the ability to focus on communications with their patients. Indeed, poor communications between doctors, nurses and hospital officials is a significant inefficiency which eats up at precious time and decreases the subsequent quality of care.

By contrast, having better communication between the doctors enables them to have more time to provide their patients with quality information.

Impacts of poor communication

Poor communication among clinicians is pervasive and unfortunately results in serious and preventable patient harm incidents. Often, the problem of communications begins with a challenge to even figure out who is the right physician to contact. In many organizations, nurses are challenged to identify which physician to contact and the preferred means with which to do so.” Is the number wrong? Is it the right person?

The problem of poor communication is clarified when noting that many clinicians use pagers as their primary mode of communications. Pagers are unfortunately a widely used platform riddled with numerous problems. These problems include issues such as contacting the right clinician but extend to the pager’s limited ability to receive information. These issues can contribute to medical error and often result in increased frustration among clinicians.

The impacts of poor communication among doctors and nurses inevitably impacts the level and quality of communication that physicians provide their patients. Lacking access to timely and immediate communications with their colleagues, physicians and nurses can only respond by providing their patients with incomplete information.

Mind shift

The goal of improved communications needs to be improving patient outcomes and lowering readmission rates. To this end, secure and encrypted smartphone based communication platforms are effective tools. Fortunately, most CIOs believe that their hospitals need to bring on a mobile strategy as part of an effort to improve clinical and operational outcomes.

In fact patients whose providers used mobile secure text messaging left the hospital about 0.77 days sooner, equivalent to about a 14 percent reduction in their overall hospital stay. Mobile secure text messaging can improve communication among providers leading to more efficient care coordination and allowing patients to leave the hospital sooner.

Conclusion

Healthcare’s focus on patients’ level of satisfaction inevitably requires physicians, nurses and healthcare colleagues to improve the quality of their communications. By investing in a HIPAA compliant, secure messaging platform that enables digital interoperability, hospitals and clinics can see decreased patient readmission and improved healthcare outcomes. Hospitals need to continue to monitor these outcomes to ensure healthcare communications

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5 things to consider before you select a patient engagement platform

As health systems increasingly seek out ways to improve the experience and inflect the outcomes of patients no matter where they are, patient engagement software platforms have flooded the market. Yes, the number of options can be overwhelming and, yes, if you haven’t identified a platform yet, now is the time to get started.

Data indicates that when health systems invest in patient engagement they can expect better patient adherence, improved patient experience scores, and fewer unexpected costs. Additionally, some patient engagement platforms offer the ability to collect a wide array of patient reported outcomes (PRO) data offering a simple way to maximize reimbursement under Alternative Payment Models (APMs) and the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS).

My experience working with dozens of health systems to implement patient engagement software has led to invaluable lessons that I’ve summarized below. Before embarking on your journey to address, improve, or increase patient engagement, take a step back and consider what our partners have learned along the way. As you move through your process, our customers recommend circling back to these every few months to stay focused.

Deliver better healthcare through effective use of secure mobile messaging

Start with “Why?”

Before journeying too far down the path of possible platforms, consider your ‘Why.’ What is your primary reason for implementing patient engagement software? Are you most interested in elevating patient experience and increasing your HCAHPS score or patient “likelihood to recommend” response rates? Or, perhaps your interest lies in completing improvement activities to maximize performance under MIPS. Once you’re crystal clear on your ‘Why,’ use it to shape the specific goals, objectives, and plans that will lead to success. Additionally, having a concrete ‘Why’ will allow you to communicate to stakeholders, team members, and clinical staff, gaining buy-in and alignment.

Alignment is key

You know your ‘Why’ and maybe you’ve begun to consider a plan for implementation. Now it’s time to gain alignment between care management, physicians, and operational leadership. If your key performance indicators (KPIs) are related to elevated patient experience and improved HCAHPS scores, who are the key players you need to bring to the table to agree on next steps and create a framework for implementation? If you’re looking to establish common ground, start by communicating a shared purpose, e.g. the patient. Discussions should focus on how a new platform can improve care management, elevate the patient experience, and automate care delivery, among other things.

In addition to alignment, it’s also ideal to have full commitment around strategy. What I mean here is that while piloting new programs can sound appealing to health systems, pilots often don’t serve the interests of your organization well. They encourage only half commitment, when you really need everyone aligned, engaged, and on board to achieve your goals.

In 2016, our client Froedtert Health went from contract signature to launch in 67 days. How did they do it? Well, the Director of the Joint Preservation and Replacement Program took ownership and managed the physicians and nurse navigators to gain alignment and consensus on the ideal patient experience and educational course. The IT project manager owned coordination of training and workflow discussions. Through a clear vision, sense of responsibility, and governance they achieved a go-live date in record time. Change can be enabled by your software partner, but it must be driven by your own leadership.

Focus on implementation first, then integration

Since you’ve made a significant investment in your electronic medical record, you’re likely to prefer that any new platform integrates with the technology you already have in place. However, IT resources are highly sought after in any health system, and focusing too many resources on integrating your new patient engagement software with your existing EMR may put a strain on your team and stall the implementation. In this case, it’s better to focus resources on implementation, and then address integration. Ensure that the platform you’ve selected is web-enabled for rapid implementation that is not dependent on immediate IT resources. But also ensure that it will integrate with your EMR, and create a second phase that centers on integration, once implementation is complete.

Preparation is paramount.

The notion that patients aren’t interested in engaging in their healthcare is pure fiction. The reality is that it’s been incredibly hard for patients to engage in their health up until very recently because they have lacked easy tools with which to engage. Most patients are eager to connect with their providers outside of the care setting and will do whatever it takes to get better quickly and return to normal life. For this reason, it’s imperative to be fully staffed and prepared for the level of activity that will likely follow once a platform is implemented.

So, how do you prepare for this? Well, since we know that 79 percent of patients’ questions or concerns can be addressed by non-physicians, re-allocate a portion of your staff that currently responds to inbound phone calls — which will be shifted to secure messaging within the platform — to serve as first responders. This staff can help triage questions, address patient front-line issues, and send concerns that are not in their scope of practice up the chain of command. This enables each of your clinical team members to practice at the top of their licenses and be more efficient. Furthermore, asynchronous communication through the application is dramatically more efficient than traditional synchronous modalities such as “phone tag.”

Smart use of data = Improvement

Lastly, keep in mind that patient engagement isn’t a software solution you launch and walk away from—it requires active participation and presents an incredible opportunity for improvement. For example, from a sample of thousands of patients, we have found that 28 percent are at risk for developing blood clots post-operatively because they had either forgotten or had not appreciated the importance of ongoing prevention activities. Gentle reminders through tools like digital patient engagement platforms are invaluable in helping close silent gaps like this. With the right platform, you’ll gain access to real-time data allowing your system to actively iterate and optimize to improve both care pathways and the patient experience.

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mental healthcare and healthcare digitization

Mental health has long been taboo from a social perspective, and access to care (especially in rural areas) is often sporadic. Health tech can address this problem

The immediate need for quality mental healthcare in America is huge – 43.8 million adult Americans experience mental illness every year.

But of those people, an estimated 60% do not seek out mental health services, largely because of the stigma around mental illness and the difficulty of accessing care.

The good news is that digital health tools can help tackle both the stigma and the lack of accessibility around mental healthcare.

The most obvious and clear solution comes with the pervasiveness of mobile technology: 68% of Americans own a smartphone, and 45% own a tablet, making mobile technology an easily accessible tool for improving care.

It also provides those who struggle with the stigma of mental illness a sense of security and empowerment: they can learn more about their symptoms and understand that they’re not alone in their suffering.

Connecting with peers via digital health solutions can help people get past the first, often debilitating, step of outreach, allowing them to seek help more confidently, when it feels right.

Mobile technology also increases accessibility to mental health specialists across the country. Many therapists have started using video chatting tools for appointments, increasing access to care for all people, whether they’re in rural areas or homebound for other health reasons.

Deliver better healthcare through effective use of secure mobile messaging

Additionally, therapists often use simple phone conversations, SMS and email to provide support between in-person sessions.

With many of today’s mental health apps, people can track their own behaviours, symptoms and moods, and report that back to their therapist, making in-person sessions more efficient and improving the quality of dialogue between patient and therapist.

The first wave of digital mental healthcare solutions is focused on informing and empowering people, most commonly around conditions like anxiety, depression and insomnia.

While each works with different topics and populations, most provide education about risk signs and symptoms, as well as positive and negative coping mechanisms.

They also include built in support systems, allowing for peer-to-peer contact and access to professional resources. Most of these applications also have tools for getting immediate help in the case of an emergency.

So what’s next?

Right now, most mental healthcare apps require proactivity and outreach from the patient. However, the use of passive monitoring, which occurs in the background of a mobile device, tracking movement, the frequency of messaging and more, could change this system drastically. Apps like Ginger.io are experimenting with passive monitoring.

Consider the scenario of a person suffering from depression: if someone is in bed and not moving for long periods of time, the app would flag a care provider.

Similarly, if someone has stopped making social connections via their mobile devices, the app would alert key members of the care team. This provides the patient valuable support when they most need it, without needing to ask for help.

In the future, passive monitoring could also include the use of voice scanning technology.

A recent development by MIT’s Lincoln Labs shows that measuring the acoustics of a person’s voice can help detect signs of depression, brain injury and even Parkinson’s disease.

Employing this technology could prove useful in catching early warning signs of mental illness. Combined with artificial intelligence (AI), the impact of passive monitoring in detecting mental illness could be even more dramatic.

Analysing trends in a person’s speech, word choice and word combinations has been proven to predict psychosis, a sign of schizophrenia.

Researchers at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre have also shown that analysing a person’s responses to a defined set of simple questions over time can be used to identify suicidal thoughts.

Connecting mental health providers to this valuable insight could increase both the quality of care and the quality of life for their patients substantially.

Passive monitoring, artificial intelligence and other new technologies can sound daunting and impersonal. That’s why the industry must make sure technology does not replace people.

Digital health solutions should never be a replacement for connecting with a therapist, for example, and those seeking help shouldn’t be diagnosing themselves using technology, either.

Instead, technology should be used in conjunction with talk therapy, to increase accessibility to care, empower and educate people.

Technology has the potential to accelerate mental healthcare treatment, encourage proactivity and lessen stigma worldwide. As America works toward improving mental healthcare, digital health technology will help care move more quickly and efficiently than ever before.

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security vulnerabilities across medical implant manufacturers emerging as the biggest threat

HOW  SECURITY FLAWS ACROSS MEDICAL IMPLANTABLE DEVICES LIKE PACEMAKERS AND DEFIBRILLATORS  ARE EMERGING AS THE BIGGEST HEALTHCARE THREAT

Over the past 12 months, security vulnerabilities in implantable medical devices have attracted considerable attention due to the potential threat to patient safety. Last year, MedSec conducted an analysis of pacemaker systems which revealed security vulnerabilities in the Merlin@home transmitter and the associated implantable cardiac devices manufactured by St. Jude Medical. Those vulnerabilities could potentially be exploited to cause device batteries to drain prematurely and the devices to malfunction

Vectramind Mobile Healthcare Solutions

Johnson & Johnson warned customers about a security bug in one of its insulin pumps last fall. while  St. Jude has spent months dealing with the fallout of vulnerabilities in some of the company’s defibrillators, pacemakers, and other medical electronics. However it seems medical device companies are yet to take this threat in a big way.Experts warn they haven’t and security breach across medical devices are the new threat which is yet to be taken seriously by medical devices and healthcare organizations

A recent study of the pacemaker ecosystem has uncovered a plethora of security flaws in devices made by other major manufacturers. Those flaws could potentially be exploited to gain access to sensitive data and cause devices to malfunction. Billy Rios and Jonathan Butts, PhD of security research firm WhiteScope has recently published a white paper detailing the findings of the study.

The pair conducted an analysis of seven cardiac devices from four major device manufacturers.The researchers evaluated home monitoring devices, implantable cardiac devices and physician programmers, with most effort concentrated on four programmers with RF capabilities. All of the devices under study were obtained from auction sites such as eBay, even though the devices are supposed to be controlled and returned to the manufacturer or hospital when no longer required. The report explained that all of the manufacturers under test had home monitoring equipment listed for sale on public auction sites.

The researchers found security flaws existed on all pacemaker systems under study. The filesystems used by the pacemaker systems were unencrypted, with data stored on removable media. Some of the devices stored highly sensitive data such as medical histories and Social Security numbers, yet the data were not encrypted to prevent unauthorized access.

The pacemaker systems allowed physicians to reprogram the devices without authentication and pacemaker programmers did not authenticate with pacemaker devices. The researchers explained that any pacemaker programmer could be used to reprogram any pacemaker from the same manufacturer. The software used by the pacemaker systems was discovered to contain more than 8,000 known vulnerabilities in third-party libraries across all the devices.

One vendor had 3,715 vulnerabilities in its third-party libraries. According to the research data  it was clear there was “an industry wide issue associated with software security updates.” The study also revealed firmware used by the devices was not cryptographically signed, therefore it would be possible to replace firmware with a custom firmware. 

Medical devices with these features—like wireless connectivity, remote monitoring, and near-field communication tech—allow health professionals to adjust and fine tune implanted devices without invasive procedures. However the flip side is that those conveniences also create potential points of exposure. And the proprietary code on these devices means it takes painstakingly reverse-engineering the softwares for implantable cardiac defibrillators for anyone outside a manufacturer to even assess the security of a device, much less discover flaws. 

According to a recent research by IOT security firm Zingbox,US hospitals currently average 10 to 15 connected devices per bed. More than 36,000 healthcare-related devices in the US alone are easily discoverable on Shodan,which is a search engine for connected devices, according to a recent Trend Micro survey. Not all are necessarily vulnerable to attack, but since they are publicly exposed attackers are more likely to target them.

how messaging can help physicians decrease workload and improve performance

Deliver better healthcare through effective use of secure mobile messaging

In the last few years, health care industry developments have increased record-keeping responsibility on physicians, making their job more difficult. A national survey commissioned by The Physicians Foundation revealed that 80 percent of physicians say they are overextended and spend 21 percent of their time on non-clinical paperwork.

The adoption of “meaningful use” of electronic health records (EHRs) has led to a expansion of new responsibilities for doctors. Many have found it challenging to provide their usual high standard of patient care while simultaneously managing new methods to track and record patient health information.

In order to help doctors ease the burden of tedious administrative work and improve performance, let’s look at ways hospitals and health systems can take the load off clinicians and give them added time and freedom to do more of what they love, caring for patients.

1. Optimize EHRs

Frustration with EHRs is a leading cause of doctor dissatisfaction as 60 percent of respondents to The Physicians Foundation survey said EHRs detract from patient interaction. The move to digital records was meant to optimize the medical information collection process, but the technology and how doctors work sometimes do not match up.

Often, doctors are forced to pay attention to their computer screen instead of being solely focused on patients. Also, the programs are not always user friendly and slow down clinicians who are expected to enter all their interactions in excruciating detail. Doctors simply don’t have enough time to spar with computers before a new patient needs to be seen, starting the cycle again.

The main purpose of EHRs was capturing reimbursement, and the doctors’ preferences and tendencies were not factored in during development. Counterintuitive technology is a barrier to treating patients, and to break this barrier, doctors need new tools that work more seamlessly with their processes.

Integrating mobility tools and computer-assisted physician documentation into doctors’ workstations and processes will ease physician frustrations. They will also allow clinicians to spend more time interacting with their patients and less time fighting with their mouse and keyboard.

2. Integrate Artificial Intelligence

Healthcare applications derived from artificial intelligence (AI) are expected to solve macro-scale problems. Many healthcare professionals and researchers look forward to utilizing the value generated from incorporating AI to assist with massive volume of population health, outcome analysis and clinical trial data.

AI doesn’t always solve problems from a 30,000 foot view, though, and some AI-driven technologies are being applied in individual doctors’ offices to help physicians improve care. Near-perfect speech recognition technology is the product of advances in AI. Integrating speech technology with EHRs relieves the burden of manually entering information. A recent EHR survey conducted by HIMSS Analytics, and commissioned by Nuance, found 67.5 percent of respondents’ organizations were adopting new technology and tools to improve clinician satisfaction with EHRs. It also found 24.7 percent of respondents’ organizations were planning to add speech recognition at point-of-care in the coming year.

The capabilities of AI are only starting to be realized, and in the future AI will deliver facts and evidence to doctors in real time. For now it plays a valuable role in helping doctors dictate their sessions, easily and instantly capturing all relevant information.

3. Improve Digital Security

Clinical info tech systems are expanding rapidly as healthcare organizations move deeper into the digital realm. Securing these applications is essential as patient data becomes increasingly vulnerable to threats that info tech departments have not previously experienced.

The nature of patient data poses document security issues unique to healthcare, which are made more difficult by the wide range of users accessing that information and the critical impact of federal privacy regulations.

Investing resources in document technologies, like print management and document capture software, add another layer of security to clinical info tech systems. They provide a secure method for tracking and printing documentation at the point of care. These technologies give doctors peace of mind by reducing the risk of healthcare information compliance breaches while also protecting documents from being accessed by those not authorized to view the information.

Incorporating technologies to optimize EHRs and tighten digital security, while also proactively integrating advancements like artificial intelligence into hospitals and health systems will allow physicians to feel what it’s like to have technology work with them for a change.

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4 key factors of encrypted text healthcare messaging

Enable secure text messaging from any healthcare interface

Ask any teenager why they prefer text messaging, or SMS, over email and the answer they'll give is likely to reflect the needs of the healthcare industry and hospital/physician communication, too. Here are a few reasons why:

• Email isn't fast enough. Email travels over the Internet and can be delivered with the speed of lightning or of a snail. Delivery is less predictable than text messages and just doesn't always happen right away. Text messages, by comparison, are typically received within a few seconds of being sent.

• Text messages get delivered (and delivery can be verified). SMS isn't subject to spam filters and blockers that occasionally prevent important email messages from getting through. Text messages sent by enterprises to their constituents (such as a hospital or practice office to a physician) do not require the standard opt-in process granting permission by the intended recipient to the sender for them to receive text messages, but more importantly these messages don't get trapped in over-zealous spam filters or simply get ignored. Plus, email can't be tracked whereas the status of a text message (e.g., "sent," "delivered" and in some cases "read") is available through the national SMS network.

• Text messages stand out. Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of emails clog people's smartphone inboxes, so it might take a long time to read one that's urgent. Text messages are perceived as more important and statistics show that 90 percent or more are opened within a few minutes.

So if even a teenager could tell us that text messaging is an ideal solution for healthcare, why isn't it used more extensively than it is in the one area that demands rapid response, accuracy and trackable delivery? In short, text messaging — in its basic, off-the-shelf incarnation — is not secure. And given the litigious world we live in, particularly when any aspect of healthcare is involved, privacy, security (and, almost by definition, HIPAA compliance) is a prerequisite.

There are several companies that offer some form of secure or encrypted text messaging. Almost all take a different approach from one another in their methodology. Presuming that all of these various methods are sufficiently secure (and if they are not you shouldn't consider them as a viable option for your facility in the first place), it's important that IT professionals and office managers consider the following key factors when making a selection:

1. Ease of use. If the system isn't as simple to use as typing a message, selecting the intended recipient and clicking "send" the chances of your office staff using it to its full effect diminishes. If a vendor's approach doesn't include an easy-to-use web-based application you should probably consider other solutions. The web-based application a vendor offers should include things like an address book so that individuals and groups can be easily selected. The system should also offer the option for those receiving the encrypted messages to select their own password with which to open it.

2. Ease of hospital/practice installation. A web-based application is, by definition, cloud-based so no software or hardware installation is required — just open a browser, log into a fully secured web page and send your message. Users won't have to deal with upgrades, software versions, syncing, etc., because they will be able to access the sending process from any Internet-connected computer. In addition, it is likely that you will want to have multiple senders, perhaps in different departments, with the ability to quickly dispatch an encrypted text message. Having a cloud-based application makes it easy to track usage for internal billing purposes if needed and much more just by having different IDs and passwords assigned to those departments. Some solutions require hardware/software combinations that must be installed at your facility to facilitate their operation. This may require an IT expert or consultant, considerations for space, security, power and backup, and maintenance of the box or desktop application. Ideally the solution will be cloud-based and require only a web-based, secure login page to send encrypted messages to recipients.

3. Ease of recipient implementation. Some solutions require each potential recipient to download an app to their phone, keep it updated and know how to use it. This may be perfectly acceptable to your organization, but you should solicit the likely recipients' opinions in advance. You may want to select a vendor whose solution allows the recipient of the encrypted message to use the apps that are native to their device without having to download any additional apps. It reduces confusion, training requirements, the need to download apps for new or replacement devices and much more. SMS capability is, for example, embedded on every phone device manufactured today. Make it easy for the recipient, and they'll use the system more. Without their cooperation, you'll have little uptake and it might waste your time and investment.

4. Cost. A costly implementation due to complexities in implementation or the need for special equipment can — and should be — a barrier when selecting a solution. Furthermore, there should not be any additional charges on a per message basis for those messages to be encrypted. Any vendor proposing a service to you should offer a low monthly fee and a small cost per message. Vendors that charge for additional "keywords" or phone support may be less desirable than those that don't. A good vendor will keep all the complexities "under the hood" and make it simple and inexpensive for you to deploy their solution.

Presuming that you have found a satisfactory vendor for the encrypted messaging services, you will need to establish procedures in the practice or hospital for sending messages. It will become increasingly important, for example, for each department or sender to have unique IDs and passwords so that you can track the usage appropriately. Some upfront coaching or training for those who will be sending messages is understandable; a good vendor will provide you with the instructional materials or even customized screencasts for your organization.

Text messaging is and will remain the fastest and most direct route to deliver information to someone's pocket. Utilizing an encrypted messaging system via SMS ensures that communication between physicians and their practices or affiliated hospitals remains secure and confidential.

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