Sprint Launches Secure Messaging Platforms for Health Care

By Brian T. Horowitz | Posted June 27, 2013 (Featured on eWeek)

Sprint will offer TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard’s secure messaging platform as well as a basic TeleMessage offering to allow doctors and clinicians to send HIPAA-compliant texts.

As doctors look to communicate quickly through text messaging without violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Sprint has announced it will offer two secure messaging platforms for health care.

They are Enterprise Message-Secure, powered by Israeli secure messaging company TeleMessage, and TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard’s TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard Pro.

TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard Pro is a secure mobile-messaging platform operating on multiple carriers. More than 1,000 health care facilities in 38 states use TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard’s services. “The growing challenge to improve communication while keeping patient information safe has led to an accelerated demand for TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard’s messaging solutions,” Brad Brooks, TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard’s co-founder and president, said in a statement.

By accessing TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard through Sprint, customers of the carrier will be able to streamline their billing through a single vendor, allowing customers to improve their workflow and operational costs, Brooks told eWEEK in an email.

Although TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard can be accessed from any mobile device as a mobile app, Sprint is the first carrier it has partnered with, according to TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard.

Separate from the June 24 Sprint announcement, TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard offers a free, consumer version and an API called TigerConnect, which can transmit messages over other services such as Mailgun, SendGrid and Twilio.

TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard messages disappear from mobile devices when they’re no longer needed, according to the messaging company. Clinicians can attach files such as spreadsheets, images, and PDFs.

Health professionals can choose between the more robust TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard platform and the basic Sprint Enterprise Message-Secure service, which operates only on Sprint.

TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard Pro will cost $10.65 per device per month for both iOS and Android. It includes features such as message recall, delete on read, group messaging, and sending and receiving without installation of the app.

The more basic service, the Sprint Enterprise Messaging Suite, will cost $3.99 per device per month. It runs only on Android currently, but Sprint plans an iOS version.

Both the TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard and Sprint platforms offer encryption, administrative controls, and delivery/read notifications.

Sprint’s wireless communication infrastructure allows health care providers to send messages in real-time to enable faster interventions and more accurate medical decisions, the wireless carrier reported.

Nurses are accustomed to communicating through texting. The secure messaging platforms will allow them to do that on the job in a HIPAA-compliant way, Julee Thompson, Sprint’s chief health care executive, told eWEEK.

“You are transacting personal health information in a secure environment end to end,” Thompson said. “The key is ensuring HIPAA compliance. HIPAA is about protecting health record information, so that’s why it’s not appropriate for people to use unsecured means to text about a patient.”

Doctors and nurses may use the secure texting to share lab results on a patient or to tell the operating room staff a patient is ready for surgery, Thompson said.

In addition to doctors and nurses, third parties such as health insurance companies or managers of a hospital’s revenue cycle can also use the messaging platform, Thompson noted.

Although the Sprint messaging platform is intended for use by health care professionals communicating with each other, one of 17 Core Objectives in Stage 2 of the federal government’s meaningful-use program calls for “secure electronic messaging to communicate with patients on relevant health information.”

Texting on a platform such as TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform – Standard or TeleMessage allows health care providers to encrypt the messages and maintain an audit trail, Thompson noted.

“Nurses are bringing it forward in their day-to-day practice,” Thompson said, adding that the HIPAA-compliant messaging platforms will provide them with additional “confidence” that the texts are being sent in a secure environment.
* TigerConnect’s TigerText Essentials^®, TigerFlow^®, TigerFlow⁺ Plus^®, TigerSchedule^®, TigerTouch^® and TigerTouch⁺ Plus^® products are now called TigerConnect Clinical Collaboration Platform (Standard, Pro & Advanced), Physician Scheduling, and Patient Engagement. Please contact us for more information.