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Scanning and Secure Sending in Motion: Presenting the DataMotion App 786 310 Team DataMotion

Scanning and Secure Sending in Motion: Presenting the DataMotion App

Today’s workplace can closely resemble the lyrics from Johnny Cash’s hit song, “I’ve Been Everywhere.” Whether you are logging in from the beach or the mountains, or simply commuting via hallway to living room, the modern “office” has most definitely morphed from the cube farms and water cooler hangouts we’ve known for so long. No matter where you happen to be, a lack of traditional equipment such as a scanner and printer shouldn’t stop you from conducting business and making sure you send your documents in a secure manner.

This is where the new DataMotion app comes in, with a smooth, user-friendly process and our zero-trust design, ensuring that the documents you send are fully secure on their journey from point A to point B.

The DataMotion app renders the availability of office equipment meaningless, allowing you to easily create single or multipage PDF documents with a click of the camera. The powerful (yet simple) editing tools allow you to make any edits you need, fill in information, and sign. Once you are done, send your documents quickly and securely, remaining fully compliant as your encrypted sensitive information travels to its intended destination.

Here is a quick rundown of the features and benefits we think you’ll find darn handy:

  • Security Users may quickly and easily send secure, fully-encrypted documents and files.
  • Compliance Every exchange in the DataMotion app is logged and tracked for verifiable compliance, keeping you well within industry and governmental requirements and regulations.
  • Easy Creation Quickly create and convert documents to PDF form.
  • Rapid Scanning Users may quickly scan single and multipage paper documents.
  • Editing Utilize easy-to-use image and PDF editing tools, with automatic cropping of documents captured by your camera.
  • Storage The DataMotion app provides up to 100 MB Cloud storage for free accounts; shares your paid account storage limits.
  • Large File Transfer Send up to 20 MB per transaction.
  • Retention We offer 14 days for free accounts, with default retention for your paid account. The app also offers a history tab for viewing & tracking your securely sent documents.
  • Productivity The ease of use and rapid delivery will save you and your staff time, allowing users to quickly move on to the next item on the to-do list.

That’s the gist of it—create, edit, sign and securely send quickly from anywhere. But we know you have might still have questions. We have answers.

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Some (Presumed) FAQs

Q: Who can benefit from the DataMotion app?

A: Anyone with an iPhone or iPad who needs to send secure documents. Whether you are a healthcare professional sending patient records from a remote setting, a county employee traveling between sites, or a financial services professional working from home, you can create, scan, sign, and send securely from anywhere, be it an airport, the coffee shop, or from your kitchen.

Q: What about people still working in an office? Can they benefit from the app?

A: Of course! Not only does our app speed up the scanning and secure sending process, allowing you to move on with other tasks, it saves you a trip to the printer. Get up from your desk on your own terms, friends.

Q: Will the DataMotion app work with my existing apps?

A: Yes! We have you covered for security and compliance–iOS Share integration adds secure delivery to documents generated by any app with Share capability.

Q: Is the app integrated with my existing DataMotion Account?

A: Yes. The DataMotion app links to your existing DataMotion account, disk quota and message retention period. In other words, the same credentials that you already use to send secure messages, documents, and emails will work on our new mobile app. (No account? No problem— create a free DataMotion Personal cloud account when you download the app.)

Q: Is this app compliant with bring-your-own-device policies?

A: Yes, for iPhones and iPads.

Q: Where Can I Download the App?

A: iPhone and iPad users will find the application in the App Store, using DataMotion as the search term.

Q: I am an existing customer. How do I link my account to the mobile app?

A: DataMotion customers must link their existing accounts to the mobile app, and can do so easily by either using a QR code or manually entering their credentials. Once you have selected and downloaded the app on your mobile device, please follow the steps below:

QR Code (located in your DataMotion dashboard)

  • Go to your DataMotion portal
  • Click on the “Link to the DataMotion Mobile App”
  • You will see a page with a QR code and instructions
  • On your mobile device, click on the “Link Your Existing Account” prompt at the bottom of the application
  • On the next screen, click on the purple “Scan” icon at the bottom of the app—your iPhone or iPad’s camera will be activated
  • Point your camera at the code on your computer screen
  • Line up your iPhone or iPad’s screen so the QR code is in the middle
  • Code will scan automatically
  • Voila! You’re all set and ready to send!

Connect Your Account Manually

  • Download and open the DataMotion mobile app
  • Tap on the login prompt
  • Enter the e-mail and password for your DataMotion portal account
  • You will receive an email from us with a multifactor authorization code, which you will then enter into the app
  • You’re all done and ready to scan and securely send!

Q: Anything else I need to know?

A: Yes. Be sure to use a real email address. In order to ensure you are who you say you are, we need to authenticate your email. You will be sent a two-factor authentication code at the email you provide.

Q: I cannot find my two-factor authentication email.

A: Please check your spam or junk mail folder first. If you have a Gmail account, it can take up to three to four minutes before receiving your second two-factor authentication email. Please wait until the second code comes through, and use that code to access.

Q: I requested the 2FA code be sent again and cannot find it.

A: If you have a Gmail account, it can take up to three to four minutes before receiving your second two-factor authentication email. Please wait until the second code comes through, and use that code to access. If you still cannot find the code, you can send us a support request via our website.

Q: You didn’t answer my question. Where can I find more information?

A: No worries, we address other FAQs here and have more details about the app here.

We hope you found this helpful, and that it answered your questions about our new app, its features, and benefits. Ready to scan and send? Download the app now.

Still have questions? We’re more than happy to help—send us a note.

Don’t forget to read more about DataMotion in 2021, and to subscribe to our newsletter for company and product news and updates.

See you in the App Store!

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Exploring DataMotion in 2021: What’s New and What’s to Come 786 310 Bob Janacek

Exploring DataMotion in 2021: What’s New and What’s to Come

We blasted into 2021 with some pretty significant changes to our products and the overall way that customers and prospects experience DataMotion. To recap, we made it even easier to learn about, try, and buy our APIs and pre-built solutions. For example, by visiting our brand-new self-service center, you can choose from a variety of our services to try out for absolutely no charge. It doesn’t matter if you want to try our secure message center APIs for exchanging PII, PCI, or other sensitive data or try our Direct Secure Messaging APIs for exchanging electronic medical records, such as those used in telehealth, it’s all right there, in the self-service center. And we are not stopping there.

We sat down with DataMotion CEO, Bob Janacek, to discuss the reasoning behind this evolution in more detail, dive into our latest API release, and get a glimpse at where we’re headed during the rest of 2021. We’d like to provide you with a summary of our conversation.

Blasting into a New Year

As was mentioned, DataMotion evolved in a big way in 2020. The main reasoning behind this? Well, to put it simply, it was to serve our website visitors and customers better. Of course, we can go into more detail than that. This is what Bob had to say about it:

“Customer needs always evolve, and we experienced a few years of change in just the past twelve months due to the unique constraints presented by the pandemic. So it’s essential that we continue to be a trusted resource for our developer and end-user customers, giving them the tools they need to excel in the world of secure, remote digital business.   

Addressing this demand meant we could benefit our customers in two ways. First, while we love talking to each of you, we understand that not everyone wants to pick up the phone and speak with our sales team, however charming and knowledgable they may be. Now, you don’t have to, you can easily learn about all of our products on our website, sign up for a free account, or test out one of our trials by yourself and only buy when you’re ready. Second, this self-service method is ideal for individuals who want to sign up for a trial outside of our normal business hours. Perhaps you’re a night owl or you live in a different time zone. You can now sign up for a trial at 3:00AM EST and immediately start testing out our products. In the past, you’d have to wait until our business hours began for a member of our team to get in touch with you.”

In summary, the main driving-factor behind the changes that we have already implemented and our roadmap for 2021, is to meet our customers and prospects needs for a simple, streamlined experience that enables them to research, try and implement tools for secure, remote digital business. So, now that we took a quick look back at the past year, let’s move on to discuss our first release for 2021  – a new API.

The Secure Message Delivery API Takes Launch

At the beginning of March, we released the secure message delivery API, the first of a series of transactional APIs. This API is a bit different than the other APIs that we currently offer. To start, instead of being an entire suite of APIs, it’s instead the delivery component of our suite of secure message center APIs, which can be quickly integrated into your mobile app, portal, or workflow.

“We heard from developers that sometimes they have projects that need a very lightweight way to securely send a sensitive document or message – they don’t always need the entire ecosystem. And they would like the cost to be on a per-transaction basis, so they only pay for what they use. The secure message delivery API, as well as future transactional APIs, are meant to fill these needs and to give developers more options so they can choose the best API or suite of APIs for their project.”

Knowing that this API offers a more focused range of functions than the secure message center APIs, we’d expect that the use cases would be somewhat different. We asked Bob to provide us with an example of how a developer may use it:

“This API is meant for applications sending sensitive data, such as a financial services mobile app, an insurance member portal, or even services that provide your credit score. It allows developers to give the users of those applications the ability to share sensitive data displayed in their app or portal with an external source by the click of a button. Because of this, it greatly enhances the usefulness of that app and improves the user’s experience. 

There are use cases for a simple, secure sharing API in many industries. Organizations such as banking, wealth management, healthcare, insurance, and even an automobile dealer or a school nurse would benefit from this API being used in one of their systems. If an organization ever needs sensitive data to flow from their organization to an end-user, then this API will benefit them.

Let’s highlight the automobile dealer to show how flexible the uses of this API really are. When you buy a car, you need to provide the dealership with some of your personal information including your driver’s license, proof of insurance, and financial information. In the time where most customers expect to be able to do most of their interactions with a business online, and especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic, having a secure, digital way to send this information is essential. So, this API provides that to the automobile dealer by supplying a secure method for customers to send their sensitive information from a mobile app or even a customer portal on the dealership’s website.”

What Else Is Landing in 2021?

If you read this blog closely, you probably caught the part about our roadmap for 2021. This year we have a lot of great new products and improvements coming to further boost your solution’s secure digital experience. Keep an eye on our website or subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to know about new product announcements, enhancements to our existing products, and more!

“In 2021 we’ll continue down the path of providing our customers and prospects a better and better experience both in terms of how they interact with us and our services, and in the services themselves. There’s an old quote from Socrates that goes something like this: ‘the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.’ For 2021 we are laser focused on increasing security while simultaneously improving customer experience.”

Read more: https://www.wisesayings.com/life-gets-better-quotes/#ixzz6pCHXY4uz

Learn more about the secure message delivery API

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The Deadline to Comply with ADT Event Notifications is Coming Soon, Here’s What You Need to Know 786 310 Doug Rubino

The Deadline to Comply with ADT Event Notifications is Coming Soon, Here’s What You Need to Know

On May 1, 2021, it becomes a requirement for hospitals, as well as psychiatric hospitals and critical access hospitals, to comply with the Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule’s requirement to have the ability to send admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) event notifications. Those who do not comply by this date are no longer eligible for Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements. So, if your organization hasn’t already taken the steps to comply or you haven’t read up on this requirement, then the time to do so is now. Here are a few key things we think you should know in order to comply with the ADT event notifications requirement.

What are ADT Event Notifications?

Admission, discharge, and transfer notifications aren’t a new concept. In fact, some health information exchanges (HIEs) have been capable of sending them for years. What is new, is the requirement for hospitals to send these types of notifications. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), ADT notifications are “electronic patient event notifications of a patient’s admission, discharge, and/or transfer to another healthcare facility or to another community provider or practitioner.”

Still need to enable ADT notifications? Direct Secure Messaging is your shortest path to compliance... Learn More

The best way to further explain this is with a brief example. Let’s say you go to the emergency room for chest pains. Upon your admission to the ER, they’ll identify the members of your care team – such as your primary care provider (PCP) and any other specialists that you see. After identifying this information, a notification will be sent to the members of this team that would be the most concerned with your latest health status. In this scenario, that would likely consist of your primary care provider and your cardiologist. If, during the course of your care, you are transferred to a post-acute care facility or a rehabilitation center, a notification of this transfer will be sent as well. Finally, once you are discharged, another notification will be sent alerting your care team that you have been sent home so they can schedule follow-up appointments as necessary. Due to this newest CMS mandate, the hospital must have the ability to send each of these notifications. However, if they are unable to identify the members of your care team and you are unable to provide them with this information, then they are under no obligation to send an ADT event notification.

So, to put it in perhaps oversimplified terms, ADT event notifications require hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and critical access hospitals, to notify the relevant members of your care team whenever a change in care occurs as long as they can be identified.

What needs to be included in a notification?

Healthcare organizations are busy and already inundated with enough data as it is. So, ADT notifications need to be formatted and sent in a way that is easy-to-process by systems and easy-to-consume by individuals. According to CMS, ADT notifications must “convey, at a minimum, the patient’s basic personal or demographic information, as well as the name of the sending institution (that is, the hospital), and, if not prohibited by other applicable law, the patient’s diagnosis.” Including this information makes it easy for individuals to read, understand which patient the notification corresponds to, and view an update on their most recent health status. It also provides some basic fields to assist with routing the message to the right department on the receiver’s end.

What kinds of benefits do patients receive from these notifications?

The goal of ADT notifications is to improve the quality of a patient’s care, improve post-care outcomes, and reduce hospital readmissions. This article by DirectTrust™, a key enabler of healthcare interoperability, provides an excellent, real-life example of how ADT notifications can improve patient care before, during, and after treatment. It explains how sending a notification of ER admission to the patient’s primary care provider, enabled the PCP to immediately get in contact with the treating practitioner to provide necessary information regarding the patient’s prior health. Thus, allowing the practitioner to make more informed decisions while treating the patient.

How can DataMotion help you securely and compliantly send ADT Event Notifications?

Talk to an expert today.

Likewise, following the patient’s treatment, the article highlights how a discharge notification instantly alerts the PCP, so they know that it’s time to schedule a follow-up appointment. This is essential for ensuring that the patient receives the proper care following discharge and to reduce the likelihood of them being readmitted to the ER.

So, in summary, these ADT notifications are a big step forward to increasing the ability for physicians, regardless of if they have treated the patient before, to make informed decisions regarding their care. Resulting in better outcomes and reduced hospital readmissions.

Do recipients need to prepare in any way to receive ADT notifications?

Technically, there is no requirement for hospitals and other healthcare organizations to be able to properly receive and process these notifications. The CMS requirement simply states that hospitals need to have the ability to send a notification in order continue to receive Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. However, as was alluded to before, many of the benefits of ADT notifications stems from what happens after an event notification is received.

Think of the previous examples of the PCP calling the ER to provide them with a summary of the patient’s health information or the PCP following up to schedule an appointment after receiving an alert that the patient has been discharged from the hospital. Neither of these actions would have taken place if the recipient did not have an organized method of receiving and processing the notifications.

With that being said, there are a couple of ways that recipients can prepare for receiving ADT notifications, mainly related to their provider directory. DirectTrust recommends that those organizations who expect to receive ADT notifications should ensure that all their information in the provider directory is accurate and up to date. In addition, they should verify who in their organization should receive each type of notification in order to ensure that every notification received is routed to the right department. This will, in turn, make it easier for them to accurately address each notification in a timely manner.

How can I enable ADT notifications at my hospital?

As was mentioned previously, hospitals and other healthcare organizations have been sending ADT notifications in some form for years. So, it makes sense that most hospitals already have existing services and technologies in place that they can leverage to enable the sending of event notifications. One existing and widely used technology that can enable these notifications is Direct Secure Messaging. Direct Messaging enables the simple, secure, and compliant exchange of healthcare information between organizations. According to DirectTrust, utilizing Direct grants the shortest path to compliance with the CMS ADT Notifications.

In order to properly utilize this technology to enable ADT notifications, DirectTrust created the Event Notifications via Direct Standard™ Implementation Guide. This guide highlights sample use cases for using Direct to enable notifications as well as provides additional context and content requirements for messages and message metadata.

DataMotion is a DirectTrust accredited HISP, CA, and RA and a proud member of the DirectTrust network.

Need Direct Secure Messaging for your organization?

Learn more about DataMotion’s healthcare solutions.

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Enabling Secure, Automated Email Notifications with the Secure Message Delivery API 786 310 Christian Grunkemeyer

Enabling Secure, Automated Email Notifications with the Secure Message Delivery API

Recently, we released the DataMotion API for secure message delivery. Like the rest of our family of APIs, it’s just as easy to code into your apps, portals, and workflows as it is to bake a cake. But what makes it unique is that it’s a small subset of our larger collection of secure message center APIs. So, instead of getting APIs for secure messaging, administration, and provisioning, you’ll only be buying an API for sending secure messages. Think of it like a computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse bundle. If you only need the monitor, there’s no sense in paying more for the mouse and keyboard, so you’ll just buy the monitor by itself.

So, if the secure message delivery API is only a subset of our secure message center APIs, what exactly does it do? Well, as you would expect, it integrates the ability to send a secure message in one direction into whatever you build. Also, it supports granular tracking and reporting at the per recipient, per attachment level. With this API alone, you probably won’t be building out an entire ecosystem for secure exchange, but you might enable automated, secure email notifications or a one-way, user-initiated secure channel for sending sensitive documents in your app or portal, for example.

Sample Scenario

To paint a better picture of what you can build with this API, we’re going to highlight a brief, sample use case. Let’s imagine you’re a front-end developer for a wealth management firm tasked with creating a secure and automatic system for notifying clients whenever there is a change in their account allocation. You already have a system in place that tracks every action taken on a client’s account and records the exact time that each action occurred. Now, you just need to create a workflow that automatically sends an email notification whenever a major change in an account takes place, such as an account allocation change. You don’t want clients to be able to reply directly to this notification, they just need to be able to view the description of the change that was made, view the steps needed to resolve changes that they don’t recognize, and you need to be able to view who has received and opened each message and when they opened it. Because the workflows needed to send these notifications are linked to private account information, you recognize that it’s better if they are sent in a secure manner to protect your client’s data.

This is where the secure message delivery API comes into play. With a few lines of code, it helps you quickly inject the functionality for sending secure email alerts right into your workflow, so you don’t have to build it yourself. With this API, your organization can easily send secure, automated account notifications and track the status of every message sent for operational and compliance reporting. Essentially, you’ll achieve a win-win-win scenario. You’ll streamline your business processes, your developers will save valuable development time, and your client’s will receive a simpler and more secure user experience.

What's Next?

So, now that you have a better idea of what you can build with the secure message delivery API, it’s time for you to get started and try it out for yourself. You can view documentation for this API or start building right now by signing up for a free trial right in our self-service portal.

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The Healthcare Vertical in 2021 – What Our New Account Executive, Doug Rubino Has to Say 786 310 Doug Rubino

The Healthcare Vertical in 2021 – What Our New Account Executive, Doug Rubino Has to Say

When we said we were working on growing the DataMotion team to up your experience with us, we weren’t kidding. In the previous interview, you got to meet our new Vice President of Sales, Joe Morini. This time, we’d like you to meet Doug Rubino, our newest Account Executive. We interviewed Doug on his new role, the trends he’s seeing in healthcare today, his thoughts on the future of healthcare information technology, and we asked a few fun questions to learn a little more about who Doug is. So, sit back, relax, and let’s get to know Doug Rubino.

Hi Doug, can you please introduce yourself, tell us about your background, where you’re from, your position here at DataMotion, and why you’re excited to join the team?

Doug Rubino: I’m located here in southeastern Pennsylvania, about 20 miles west of the city of Philadelphia. I was born and raised here in the area and never really left so, you can call me a Philly guy at heart. I’m a southeastern Pennsylvania, northeastern person, if you will.

My professional background is within the healthcare information technology space and I’ve spent upwards of 20 years in customer-facing roles. I’ve had an opportunity to work directly with healthcare organizations of many types. For example, I’ve worked with providers, health plans, third-party administrators, and healthcare IT vendors. I’ve enjoyed working with these organizations as they evaluated technology for use across their enterprise to address their particular requirements, whether these be reimbursement, regulatory, or administrative requirements.

In my role here with DataMotion, I’ll be expected to contribute to the continued growth of the company within the healthcare vertical. So, that includes healthcare providers, health plans, and healthcare IT vendors. We also want to begin looking at life sciences as an area of growth for the company, for example a clinical research organization or a pharmaceutical company.

So, I’m very excited to be here. Throughout my career, it’s been somewhat of a passion of mine, as it relates to healthcare IT, around the topic of interoperability. From the very beginning of my career, the overarching thing that I’ve been passionate about is how do we improve upon how all of the different stakeholders within the healthcare ecosystem communicate with each other electronically? I think that DataMotion is a big part of that. So, I’m excited to be here and I’m looking forward to strong growth in the healthcare vertical in 2021.

Okay, very cool. So, now let’s move on to some goal-related questions. What would you say are some of your short and long-term goals in this position? For example, one thing you hope to accomplish three months from now, and then another that you hope to accomplish a year from now.

Doug Rubino: So, short-term, I ideally want to be able to connect with our healthcare customers. And when connecting with them, I mean getting beyond the general introduction. I’m very interested in how they’re using our services today, how they deployed DataMotion, what their use cases are, and what their thoughts on the service are, good, bad, and ugly. I think there is so much value that we can get from our current customers. Whether it’s information that we take back and share internally with our product teams to drive further innovation in the product, or taking use cases and using those during conversations with prospects. Our customers are a wealth of knowledge and there’s so much we can learn from them. When we don’t take advantage of that, we’re doing a disservice to ourselves and to our customers.

So short term, I want to be able to connect with as many current customers as I can to advance those objectives that I just laid out. Long term, it goes without saying, that we want to drive market share, revenue growth, and continue to expand into the healthcare vertical. As I said earlier, we see the life sciences vertical as an area of growth for the company. When we look at clinical research and pharmaceutical organizations, these guys are looking at ways to connect with their constituents. Meaning, members or patients that are part of a clinical trial. I think the DataMotion services and technologies that we can leverage to help them are important in making this connection.

Okay, those sound like some great goals. So, as we’ve been talking about, you’re going to be working with our healthcare customers and prospects. Can you talk about the trends that you’re seeing in this industry?

Doug Rubino: Sure. The one thing that stands out immediately to me, is that ensuring the security and privacy of clinical data PHI that is exchanged electronically, has never been more top of mind than it is now. I think organizations are looking to find more ways to continue to exchange that information electronically.

So, going back to the interoperability discussion, our healthcare data resides in different silos within an ecosystem of care. So, organizations are thinking “how do I exchange information about Doug Rubino that will enable me to better manage and better coordinate his care?” The fact of the matter is, that all of us as consumers, all of our PHI and clinical data reside in different places. In order to ensure the effective coordination of care for any one patient or constituents of patients, an organization’s ability to effectively exchange information electronically is always top of mind. This may be because they realize that it’s a condition of participation, a regulatory requirement, a contractual commitment, or they just want to improve the general care management coordination for a patient.

So, these guys are all striving to improve quality of care, but at the same time, they’re wondering how they can improve quality of care if they have data residing in disparate source systems. That’s why consolidating, aggregating, and exchanging that data is a big trend right now. As it relates to DataMotion, we’re providing them with the technology to be able to privately, and confidently ensure they’ve exchanged that data in a secure manner.

So, all of this relates to improving quality of care and the exchange of data from disparate silos. As we all know, the Coronavirus greatly impacted the healthcare industry. Do you think this is at least partially behind the trends you discussed or was the healthcare industry already heading in this direction?

Doug Rubino: I think the industry was already headed in this direction. It’s been something that has been debated for a number of years now, and the Coronavirus, if anything, accelerated that discussion. In terms of how we enable organizations to communicate and share information remotely, one of the technologies that is top of mind is telehealth. We saw a tremendous growth in that market in 2020 in terms of adoption across the industry. I think that going forward, the industry will actually see this as a standard care option for what they call primary care virtual consults. Two years ago, that probably wouldn’t have been the case. But, looking in terms of where we are headed February 2021, it’s certainly seems that adoption across the industry is more widespread than ever.

I read something this morning on this point with respect to telehealth. I read that there were three new pieces of legislation brought before Congress in Washington in late January, early February, that are aimed at the use of telehealth. How do we expand the use of it? How do we expand adoption across the industry? Looking at things like reimbursement, how do we reimburse for this? How do we drop telehealth into a nursing home or a long-term care facility or a post-acute care facility so that an elderly population can communicate with their caregivers and/or family members?

So, there’s a lot of people looking at telehealth and the acceptance of it across the industry. What we’re seeing in Washington right now is indicative of that. DataMotion is positioned very well to be able to help with that adoption. As members and patients have a need to communicate with their caregivers or families, they’ll be naturally wanting to or having to exchange clinical data. This is where we’re able to facilitate that process with these organizations and for these individuals. So, I see our organization and I see our deliverables playing a big part of that process going forward.

Okay, so now we’re going to move on to a few fun questions. When you’re not working, what would you say is your favorite hobby or activity?

Doug Rubino: I’m a big-time golfer and I consider myself the be a full-fledged member of the public circuit tour in southeastern Pennsylvania. I’m also a family guy, family is number one. But in my free time, you’ll find me on the golf course. I also like to read, I’m a big history buff, I read a lot of World War Two history. In summary, I like to read, golf, and watch hockey.

So, my next question, if you could have dinner with any two famous people, who would they be and why?

Doug Rubino: So, I’m going to draw on my love of history here. The two folks who I selected are James Madison and an admiral from the Second World War, Admiral Nimitz.

I selected Madison because I love to understand how we got to where we are today as a nation, as individuals, and as human beings. You know, Madison was credited as being one of the fathers of the United States Constitution. So, he’s the guy that brought all of the different relevant stakeholders together. And I’d love to talk with him about what was required to bring all of these different folks together with differing agendas at that period of time, with the foresight into, thinking, here’s where we are today, in 2021. The compromises that were required to put that document in place are remarkable. And I would love to talk with him about that political process that he had to go through there.

The other one is Nimitz. Like I said, I love World War Two history, I just finished reading a book about the war in the Pacific. Nimitz was the admiral that oversaw our naval operations from 1941 to 1945. This guy was remarkable in terms of system leadership qualities, and the strategic thinking that went into ensuring that we were successful in the Pacific in the Second World War. I have so many questions I would love to ask him. But, again, it’s the leadership qualities that I keep coming back to in terms of working with folks who have different agendas and thoughts on “here’s what I think we should do.” It’s just that general leadership quality, that is the thing that stands out to me in terms of what those two guys bring to the table, and that’s why I’d like to talk with them.

So, my last question, is there anything else you would like to share with the readers before we go?

Doug Rubino: As I said, the better part of my career has been in healthcare information technology. I’m passionate about the business of healthcare and specifically, the business of technology and services to address a lot of the problems and challenges that healthcare organizations are encumbered with today. So, drawing on that earlier conversation we had around interoperability, I think that improving interoperability among different healthcare organizations, long term care facilities, pharma facilities, and more is incredibly important. If we can help them communicate and share information with each other electronically, I think that will go a long way to improving health and patient outcomes. I see DataMotion as an integral component and a big piece of that process. So, I’m excited to be here and I think that this deliverable is definitely something that we need to bring further awareness to in the market.

Key Takeaways:

  • Doug believes that our customers are a wealth of knowledge. We can learn a lot from each other about the problems they’ve solved with our services, what their thoughts are on our products, and more.
  • Interoperability is a hot topic in healthcare with organizations constantly looking to better manage data located in disparate silos.
  • Doug believes DataMotion is well-positioned to help organizations improve their clinical data exchange and quality of care.
  • Doug believes the use of telehealth will continue to grow over the next several years and is interested to see how the acceptance of it will continue to expand across the industry.
  • If Doug could sit down and have dinner with two famous people, he would choose James Madison and Admiral Nimitz to learn more about their leadership qualities in regard to bringing people together with differing agendas to unite over a common goal.

Ready to learn how you can better exchange clinical data electronically?

Get in touch with Doug, he’ll be happy to help!

Get in Touch
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Getting Started with the DataMotion Secure Message Center API – Session Keys and Sending a Secure Message 788 311 Jose DeLavalle

Getting Started with the DataMotion Secure Message Center API – Session Keys and Sending a Secure Message

4 Minute Read

In this blog series, you’ll learn how to use the DataMotion secure message center APIs. We’ll start with the basics of getting a session key and sending a message, then explore a wide range of additional functionality. To make this series quick and easy to follow, we’ve broken it up into a few, easy-to-consume parts. This first part should only take you a few minutes, so you can start brewing a pot of coffee and celebrate with a fresh cup when your code is done.

For those who aren’t familiar with this family of DataMotion APIs, they make implementing modern secure document and message exchange in your mobile apps, portals, and workflows easy and fast. It’s a win-win – you get the secure features you need while having extra time to focus on other features that make your app best-of-its-kind.

There are many use cases where our secure messaging APIs have saved the day, ranging from enabling client to advisor exchanges in wealth management apps, to the exchange of medical results for clinical trials. Now, customers can say goodbye to muzak on hold, stamps, faxes or trips to see their advisor. Instead, they’ll be saying hello to securely getting business done in record time.

Now that you have a better understanding of what these APIs can do, let’s begin with the first part of this tutorial. We’ll start with showing you how to get a session key and send your first secure message directly from the “How Do I?” module in our self-service center.

First Things First...

There are a couple of things you will need to confirm prior to diving into this tutorial. First, in order to get a session key and send your first message, you must be signed up for a DataMotion developer account. If you don’t have one yet, you can fill out the form that pops up to “Create a DataMotion Account” when clicking the “Login” button at the top right corner of the self-service center. Upon completion of this form, you’ll begin a free 120-day trial of our secure message center APIs and you’ll be ready to move on to the rest of this tutorial. So, let’s get started!

Create a DataMotion account free trial sign up form

Get a Session Key

Before calling any of the functions in this suite of APIs, you’ll need to get a session key. A session key verifies a user’s account credentials, so the system knows it’s actually them when making API calls. To get a session key, your users will enter their UserIDorEmail and Password. In this example, use the ones that you established when creating your developer account and enter them into the body of your HTTPS request. Then click the Submit button.

How to get a session key for the secure message center API using your UserIDorEmail and Password

A successful response will return a 200 Status Code with a Response BODY:

Sample of a successful session key response body. Including a 200 OK status code and your session key

To keep things secure (that’s what we do), this session key will expire after 30 minutes of inactivity on an account.

It’s important to take a quick step back to discuss this process of getting a session key in a little more detail. For the purposes of this tutorial, we asked you to simply input your UserIDorEmail and Password. However, this isn’t the only method to verify your identity with our services. We also support single sign on and integrations with public or private identity providers, such as SAML, to establish and verify a user’s identity.

Send a Message

Now that you have a session key, keep it handy. We will be adding it as a custom header value to every other DataMotion secure message center API call we make. Alright, so let’s send your first message.

Using the same “How Do I?” module, you’re going to move down to the tab labeled “Send a Message.” First, to make things easy, you’ll notice that the “To” and “From” fields are already filled out for you using the email address associated with your DataMotion account. All you’ll need to do is fill out the Subject and the TextBody, then click Submit to send your message.

Sending a message with the secure messaging API with test subject and test text body

If your secure message sends successfully, you will receive a 200 status code along with your message ID and the message expiration date. Because the “To” field was pre-populated with your email address, you will receive a message waiting notification in your inbox. A successful request will look similar to the following:

Sample response for a successfully sent message with 200 OK status code, MessageID, and message ExpirationDate

What's Next?

Take a bow!  You’ve successfully gained access to the API, established a Session Key and sent a message. It’s a great time to treat yourself to that fresh cup of coffee!

You’re now ready to move on to the next step. In the next part of this blog series, we’ll show you how get your message summaries and how to read a message.

In the meantime, you can read up on our Get a Session Key and Send a Message documentation for the secure message center APIs in our developer center.

If you haven’t already, try it out for yourself using our “How do I?” module in our self-service center!

Try it Out
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SaaS vs. PaaS: How to Choose What Type of Secure Exchange Solution Is Right for You 788 309 Christian Grunkemeyer

SaaS vs. PaaS: How to Choose What Type of Secure Exchange Solution Is Right for You

When searching for a secure exchange solution, finding a platform that safeguards sensitive information is crucial. Imagine you’re searching for a secure document, messaging or email solution, and two contenders emerge — software as a service (SaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS). It’s a big decision, but with the right platform, you can feel confident that your information is protected.

In a world where information flows ceaselessly, choosing the right secure data exchange platform is extremely important. The two major choices — SaaS and PaaS — come with their unique advantages in terms of scalability, interoperability and faster time-to-market.

In this blog, we’ll guide you through the process of how to decide which of these data exchange platforms is right for you, starting with an overview of SaaS vs. PaaS, whom each option is best suited for and the benefits of each. By the time you finish reading, you should have a better understanding of which direction you should be heading.

SaaS vs. PaaS

Before we begin, it’s essential to define an SaaS vs. a PaaS.

SaaS

SaaS refers to a cloud-based software distribution model where a third-party service provider manages the software applications.

In this model, users can access and utilize the software over the internet, eliminating the need for local installation and maintenance. With SaaS, organizations can leverage fully developed and pre-built software solutions without coding experience or the complexities of managing underlying infrastructure, platforms, operating systems or applications.

Under the SaaS model, users subscribe to the software, paying for the service monthly or annually. SaaS solutions cater to various applications, including email communication, document management, customer relationship management and more.

Traditionally, this is how most standard email encryption processes are offered. These pre-built solutions make it easy for any organization, large or small, to enable the secure exchange of things like messages and documents for their employees and customers.

PaaS

PaaS represents a cloud computing service model that furnishes an environment and platform on which you are responsible for installing necessary software and developing, deploying and maintaining your applications. By eliminating the complexities of infrastructure and platform management, it becomes easier to focus exclusively on application management and development. In this framework, your technology team can concentrate on managing and developing applications, while the service provider takes care of the hardware, operating system and other infrastructure components.

PaaS is ideal for situations where you require custom integrations with applications and greater control over the development and management of your applications. PaaS solutions typically involve the use of APIs and other connectors to integrate certain functionalities into an existing or new system.

The Benefits of a Pre-built, SaaS Solution for Secure Exchange

Now that you have a better understanding of what each type of solution is, it will be helpful to clearly lay out the benefits of each, starting with pre-built solutions for securely exchanging documents and messages. The benefits of a SaaS solution for secure exchange are substantial and are well-suited for any business, from small startups to enterprises. Here’s a breakdown of the key benefits:

  • Faster time-to-market: SaaS solutions come pre-built, eliminating the need for complex coding or development efforts. This means you can swiftly implement secure exchange functionalities without the resource-intensive process of building from scratch.
  • Swift implementation: Businesses can rapidly deploy SaaS solutions. This speed to market is invaluable for staying competitive. Additionally, utilizing a SaaS platform can enhance security measures, as the service provider is accountable for regularly implementing and thoroughly testing bug fixes, patches and enhancements.
  • Low resource commitment: SaaS solutions remove the need for an extensive development team or significant resources. This is particularly beneficial for organizations with limited to no technical expertise.
  • Managed updates and enhancements: With SaaS, updates, bug fixes and enhancements are managed by the service provider. This ensures your secure exchange platform remains current, robust and fortified against emerging threats.
  • User-friendly accessibility: Because SaaS solutions are accessed via the internet, they can easily be used on desktop or mobile devices, so you, your employees and even customers can securely send and receive documents from virtually anywhere.
  • Integration possibilities: Some pre-built offerings also give the option to integrate with existing or new systems. This includes features like Single Sign-On, toolbar plug-ins or seamless encryption added to your email client’s backend. Such integrations enhance the user experience and improve security.
  • Increased trust and efficiency: Overall, these pre-built solutions are great for those looking to accelerate their business processes and boost customer trust with more secure, trustworthy and easy-to-use methods of communication.
  • Flexible pricing models: Because these SaaS solutions typically follow a monthly or annual pricing model, both large and small businesses can enjoy the benefits of pre-built secure exchange while only paying for the features they need.
  • Zero capital costs: SaaS is a subscription-based service that requires no additional software installation or application development, resulting in zero capital costs. The subscription fees are considered operational expenses.
  • Highly scalable: SaaS is highly scalable. You can scale up or down based on the demand without the need for procuring additional infrastructure resources.

The Benefits of PaaS Solutions & API Integrations for Secure Exchange

So, you’ve learned a little bit about ready-to-use pre-built solutions. But what if you already have your own application or maybe you’re building out a self-service portal and want to add secure messaging functionality directly within it?

If you’re looking for a simple way to extend a secure experience in a truly native, natural and integrated way across your apps, portals and workflows, then the use of APIs and connectors might be better suited for you. This is where PaaS shines, tailored to meet your unique needs. Let’s dive into its benefits:

  • Native integration for enhanced security: PaaS solutions offer native integration, seamlessly embedding secure exchange functionalities into existing systems. This enhances PaaS security by ensuring secure exchange is an intrinsic part of your operations.
  • Tailored features with APIs: Rather than building out every feature yourself, you can take advantage of API integrations for some of the features that are not part of your business’s core competencies. This customization capability allows you to sculpt secure messaging, document exchange and more to match your organization’s unique requirements.
  • Efficiency and cost-effectiveness: PaaS is a haven for developers, vendors and system integrators. Utilizing APIs and connectors streamlines development and implementation, making the process more efficient and cost-effective. You can port your existing applications and solutions onto the PaaS platform and expand upon them without needing to worry about managing the infrastructure and operating system.
  • Adaptive: PaaS solutions and API integrations are adaptable to a variety of data exchange platforms, from secure messaging to document exchange. Their scalability ensures they can meet the evolving needs of your organization.
  • Robust platform and compliance assurance: You can be confident that your new secure messaging functionalities were built on a robust platform by developers and engineers who have taken the time to ensure that the APIs you use will meet the third-party certifications you need to comply with regulations that are industry-specific or hard to implement.

Choosing the Right Secure Exchange Solution for You

To be completely straightforward, it depends. Both data exchange platforms are solid choices but ultimately depend on your organization’s needs and resources. Let’s consider your choices:

  • Option 1: If you’re looking for a solution that requires minimal resources and maintenance on your end while still providing you with features that suit your organization’s needs, then a pre-built SaaS solution would probably be better suited for you.
  • Option 2: If you’re a developer, software engineer or system integrator and you want to add-in secure messaging functionalities to the app or portal that you’ve built, then using APIs and connectors would be ideal for you.

As you look to make this decision, it is important to consider both SaaS and PaaS intently, as either could be the right choice based on your organization’s specific requirements.

Experience Secure Communication with DataMotion

At DataMotion, we offer both of these options so you can choose the one that best fits your needs. Our pre-built bundles and API solutions were designed so you can have maximum security without compromising your experience. All of our options are scalable to your business needs, and we offer various integrations so you can add secure exchange in the systems you want in the way that’s best for you. Try them out for yourself by testing out one of our pre-built bundles or our secure message center APIs now.

With over two decades of experience, we’ve perfected the art of secure exchange. Contact us online and take the first step toward a secure digital future.

Updated November 1, 2023

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Blasting off into a New Year 1024 404 Bob Janacek

Blasting off into a New Year

Welcome to the new DataMotion.com.  We invite you to take a tour through the site.

We are thrilled to announce the launch of the next generation of DataMotion. We had two primary goals: 1. to create a site that better reflects our position as a leading provider of APIs and pre-built solutions for secure data exchange, and 2. to create a better, more intuitive experience for finding information, and trying or buying our services.

You can now quickly find information about our APIs and pre-built bundles through articles, case studies, how to videos, documentation and libraries. When you’re ready, easily try out our services at no charge via our new customer self-service center. To simplify the buying the experience, we’ve created new service bundles, starting with a free bundle for personal use, to ones designed for individual professionals, teams and large enterprises. And we are showing you what each service costs – right up front.

For our existing customers – no worries – the solutions you are currently running are now a part of one of the bundles.  You might see some with a new name – for example SecureMail is now called secure mailbox and is included in all bundles. When you come to the site to login, you will now see three options: one to go to your Secure Message Portal (SecureMail), one for Direct Secure Messaging (portal) and one to access your self-service Customer Center. Just pick the service you already have and log in like you usually do.  Any questions – just get in touch with your account representative or contact support.

We hope you find the new site easy to access and navigate.  And we’re just getting started.  2021 will bring even more great ways for you to do secure, remote, digital business with your customers and partners.  We look forward to making these available to you in the coming year.  So, stay tuned, sit back, and explore!

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What is Angular (and Why Are We So Excited About It?) 1024 404 Jose DeLavalle

What is Angular (and Why Are We So Excited About It?)

If you’re a software engineer or you do any work in the information technology field, then you’ve probably heard at least one person talk about Angular. If you use it for your own sites or have simply read all about it and are well-versed on the framework, then you might even join the conversation and begin excitedly discussing all of its pros and cons. But if you’ve never heard of it, or you’re not too familiar with Angular, then trying to listen to and engage in that conversation can be pretty complicated. You’ll probably spend most of your time thinking “what even is Angular and why does everyone seem so excited about it?”

What is Angular?

Well, to take the definition directly from Angular themselves, it’s “a platform and framework for building single-page client applications using HTML and TypeScript… It implements core and optional functionality as a set of TypeScript libraries that you import into your apps.”

If you’re a Software Engineer, then that definition probably made a lot of sense and you can skip to the next paragraph. If you’re not a Software Engineer, then you’re likely left thinking “that’s great, but what does that mean?” To put it simply – Angular is a framework that helps software engineers create applications that eliminate the need to do a full refresh of your browser every time you need to switch pages. Because of this, sites built using Angular allow their users to quickly switch to the next part of the site that they would like to view, without having to spend a long time waiting for it to load.

So, besides this obvious benefit of faster loading times, what are the other reasons people seem to love Angular?

What are the Benefits of Angular?

If you go on the Angular website, there’s a plethora of features, benefits, and information about their platform to look at. We could just list all of these and give you links to click on, but that’s not quite as interesting and you could find all of that information yourself by simply searching for them online. Instead, the DataMotion Software and Support Engineers and I who use Angular every day pulled together some of our favorite benefits of the framework. So, let’s get started.

  1. It’s easy to prototype a site

It makes sense that the first benefit listed is related to your starting point when building any site – creating your prototype. The Angular command-line interface (CLI) allows you create a basic Hello World Single Page App in merely seconds. This is possible because the framework makes it easy to boiler plate a new application. Meaning, you can easily reuse code for multiple applications, such as the code which provides the basic framework of your site.

  1. The Angular framework provides an excellent experience for developers

When building a new site, or even modifying an existing one, you’ll probably be making a lot of iterations as you perfect it for your end-users. This could mean that as you fix one thing, something else breaks in the process. Rather than making several changes at once and then finding out that there’s an error, Angular allows you to see the changes that you make instantly, meaning, if you make a mistake, you’ll figure this out right away and you can easily fix it. Ultimately, this saves time and helps us create a better site.

  1. There’s no need to re-invent the wheel

It’s kind of silly to spend a lot of time writing new code for a material design component when someone else has already created one that works. As stated by one of our engineers, one of their favorite things about Angular is the community of open-source projects and libraries that engineers can leverage during development. With Angular, we have the ability to quickly insert basic components and then spend our time focusing on all of the features that make our applications, unique.

  1. It’s easy to set up routing between components

When creating a site, it’s important that your users can easily switch between pages, or “views.” In the past, this would require that the routing mechanism go back to the server to retrieve the next page. However, with Angular the routes are all client side. Meaning, everything is loaded into the Angular app, making the entire user experience fast and responsive. In addition, Angular provides an easy way to set up this routing between components. You can take a look yourself at how easy it is by viewing Angular’s documentation (which we’re all pretty impressed with) and by testing out a live example on their site.

  1. Angular is constantly optimizing and improving their framework

The final benefit of Angular is that it is constantly being improved due to Google developing and maintaining the framework. Any bugs found by the community are fixed in a rapid manner and even better, the updates released for it are largely non-breaking, so those sites looking to upgrade to the newest features can do so with confidence that their existing functionalities will continue to work without error.

Why Do We Care So Much About Angular?

Now that you have a basic background on what Angular is and its benefits, you’re probably wondering why we wanted to write a whole blog on the topic and what these benefits mean for our end users. Well, to put it simply, all of the benefits above result in a better experience for our customers and end-users. Faster loading times, more efficient, modern, and responsive sites are just the tip of the iceberg (not to mention – with sites built on Angular, you don’t need to stare at a white screen every time a page loads, everything is loaded at once).

For our API customers, Angular makes it easy to integrate APIs into your solutions with their built in HttpClient. This HttpClient is an injectable module that simplifies making asynchronous HTTP calls from your client-side Angular app to a backend service (such as DataMotion’s APIs). Combined with their RxJs implementation, it allows for network calls like this to be subscribed to with a modern observable design pattern.

Are you a developer? Stay tuned because we’ll soon be teaching you how you can integrate our API’s for secure message and document exchange into your Angular solution. Until then, you can read up on our API’s by viewing our DataMotion APIs for secure message center page or our DataMotion APIs for Direct Secure Messaging page.

Infographic about healthcare data sharing
Three Options for Healthcare Data Sharing 768 768 Team DataMotion

Three Options for Healthcare Data Sharing

New initiatives to offer a mix of payment programs is driving healthcare organizations to share clinical data across the care continuum. View the three options for healthcare data sharing in this infographic…