Asked to describe the core value that Diversinet brings to healthcare providers, senior vice president Jay Couse focuses immediately on the need for innovation in healthcare delivery -- and the difficulty of creating transformational solutions from inside the industry.
According to Couse, “Innovations in mobile health won’t necessarily come from current industry leaders. There is a real inertia issue right now as care providers and payers are looking for more clarity on the regulations that will apply to mobile health services and are waiting to see what their competitors are doing in mHealth. We have heard from lots of providers and executives at very large health organizations that they are reluctant to move beyond static smart phone applications and mobile browsing of online health information.”
What’s more, “The prevailing concerns about security issues and privacy regulations are barriers to more widespread adoption of mobile health services that can improve provider efficiency as well as improve patient outcomes and healthcare access.”
Diversinet originally built its core competency in strong mobile authentication, encryption and secure wireless transactions to provide solutions for the financial services and payment industries. The company’s patented MobiSecure technology was developed to meet the requirements for financial transaction security on a mobile device. Now Diversinet is capitalizing on its financial services roots in implementing mobile healthcare solutions. Couse is confident that Diversinet’s proven and robust mobile security is exactly the treatment that health providers and large employer groups have been waiting for.
He said, “Diversinet’s secure mobile interface and transaction platform are powerful enablers for mobile health innovation. We can give even the largest healthcare providers a new option for interacting with their patients, delivering lab results, updating health records, and more. They get the freedom to use the full power of the mobile channel, without worrying about sending confidential data in the clear or asking patients to deal with complex login protocols and passwords.”
In designing MobiSecure Health, Diversinet leveraged its experience with financial encryption and authentication solutions, including an integrated, mobile, one-time-password (OTP) capability that authenticates individual identity every time a patient uses a specific mobile device and enters a PIN to interact with their electronic medical or personal health records, lab results or other personal health information. Security and encryption at the application layer and the communications layer validate the mobile interaction and meet the HIPAA security and privacy requirements for patient information and data.
It’s a strong security story, but how exactly does this benefit patients and accelerate the pace of healthcare innovation? Diversinet’s executive vice president Mark Trigsted provides specific examples of how the solution is expanding treatment options and improving patient outcomes. One innovative application involves mobile interactions with U.S. wounded warriors who have suffered traumatic brain injury and are at high risk for mental and physical health problems when they return home and begin to transition to civilian life. Traditional follow-up with these wounded warriors by means of an Army-assigned case manager was not effective enough in tracking the onset of severe depression, or in treating other post-combat health complications.
The Army has adopted Diversinet’s secure mobile interface to implement broad-based health services for these wounded warriors and to enable immediate, two-way encrypted communications and follow-up . Because the mobile device is secure, the solution can expand from reminders about medical appointments to more confidential discussions with care providers about health issues and mobile access to medical records. The initial pilot implementation for this mCare program has been so successful that it is being expanded to over 10,000 wounded warriors.
In July, Diversinet announced that HealthPartners, the largest consumer-governed, nonprofit healthcare organization in the United States, licensed MobiSecure® Health to enhance mobile communications with its 1.25 million subscribers.
One of the first patient populations that HealthPartners plans to serve with a Diversinet-secured mobile health application is high-risk pregnant women. A prenatal application will provide these patients with customized heath advice and will enable two-way interactions with their healthcare providers. Given the high cost of intensive care for premature infants, every improvement in patient compliance with prenatal healthcare advice has a significant impact on improving outcomes for mother and baby as well as reducing costs for insurance providers.
Trigsted notes that while some healthcare providers may move slowly because they don’t know that fully secure mobile health options are already available, others may be moving ahead without fully understanding the potential for violating current and future regulations. “Today’s mobile health landscape includes daily violations of the rules for HIPAA compliance. So far, this is pervasive and regulators are turning a blind eye. Sending medical and personal health records over the standard commercial wireless networks is not necessarily secure and not strong enough to fully comply with HIPAA, but many vendors and early adopters are taking that approach. They want to use standard networks because that seems to them like the only cost-effective option. Diversinet is working to educate providers about the availability of secure options that don’t add complexity to their IT infrastructure or to their patients’ access to mobile health services.“
Mark Trigsted will be discussing the mCare and HealthPartners case studies and other examples of the implementation of secure mobile health applications at the mHealth Leadership Summit in Boston on July 30. For more information on this event, visit http://worldcongress.com/events/HL10028/posters.cfm?confCode=HL10028
