While I’ve been attending trade shows and networking events for over 15 years, next week will mark my first time attending the national HIMSS conference! I’m excited to attend for many reasons, but first and foremost, I’m truly looking forward to discussing how technology can help improve patient outcomes, a major topic since the introduction of Meaningful Use Stage 1 in 2010. Meaningful Use Stage 2 was introduced in 2012, bringing attention to the need for secure and frictionless digitizing of medical records. In addition to the secure transport, this approach also makes it easy to receive those medical records, lending itself to a seamless transition of care and in turn, helping improve patient outcomes. In today’s blog post, I will dive deeper into this topic, speaking to DataMotion’s involvement in making health information exchange and medical record transmission and receipt a smoother, simpler experience while maintaining security and compliance.
As an accredited HISP (Health Information Service Provider), DataMotion is a major player within Meaningful Use Stage 2, providing Direct Secure Messaging and enabling secure, easy exchange for HIEs (Health Information Exchange), providers, and vendors. As defined by DirectTrust™, Direct Secure Messaging is a secure communication transport for clinical information over the open Internet. DirectTrust describes Direct Secure Messaging as having a similar appearance and function to regular email, but the contents are encrypted via digital certificates and PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). Only the sender and intended recipient are able to decrypt and read the message. DirectTrust further explains that Direct Secure Messaging is a widely-deployed and accessible method with which to communicate sensitive, health-related information, promoting interoperability between disparate systems and organizations within the healthcare ecosystem.
With almost three million Direct addresses in use today, focus has shifted from digitizing transitions to creating a smooth, user-friendly experience and improving patient outcomes based on digital data. DataMotion has had a lot of enlightening conversations with public health IT providers that are leveraging data to provide public health agencies with rapid critical insights in their ongoing battle against the COVID-19 pandemic. But it goes beyond just COVID-19. What if we could pinpoint exactly where a viral outbreak started based on testing data alone? One goal is the ability to transmit sensitive health information securely and leverage healthcare standards like ICD-10-CM/PCS Medical Coding to get us the *right* information without compromising PHI (Personal Health Information) or PII (Personal Identifiable Information).
Today, DataMotion’s Direct Secure Messaging securely transmits millions of messages on a monthly basis, including flu and COVID-19 test results, immunization data, and much more. But Direct doesn’t just have to be clinical EHR (Electronic Health Records) communications–there are so many more possibilities. And these possibilities are precisely why I’m so interested in speaking with population health vendors to better understand how they’re serving their communities.
The pandemic quickly accelerated digital transformation for organizations in all industries, particularly the healthcare ecosystem. COVID-19 highlighted the need for touchless, digital communications in healthcare, especially when dealing with PHI and medical records. This has ushered in a wave of process evaluation and change. Call centers have found that they need to empower their agents to securely communicate with members in a way that’s seamless for both the agent and the member. Another challenge was faxing. Faxing medical records quickly became more difficult during the pandemic, thanks to an almost-exponential influx of patients, increased communications with policy holders, and a virtual army of field nurses working remotely without a home base of operations.
DataMotion is at the forefront of helping health insurance payors communicate seamlessly and securely with their members through secure, natural, familiar ways of communication. Digital communications via chat, email, and document sharing applications have become rapidly normalized, and will continue to expand in the coming years. I’m excited to hear how organizations are integrating these functions into day-to-day applications and systems, and hope to discuss further at HIMSS.
With this being my first HIMSS conference, I’m equally excited to speak with new, emerging health IT vendors, as well as established players in the space. We’re all working together to achieve the common goal of improving patient outcomes through faster and smoother exchange of secure digital communications and health records. I gladly invite anyone to schedule some time to speak with me at the show – you never know what either of us will learn!
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