Secure Texting is Evolving into a Collaboration Platform

Secure texting is evolving into a collaboration platform confronting the complexities and protocols of healthcare enterprise communications

The effective use of mobile technology in the regulated healthcare industry is improving patient safety and outcomes according to 94 percent of physicians and 90 percent of hospitals leaders surveyed. Secure texting is rapidly developing into the first choice to send information while keeping sensitive data secured.

Seven hundred and seventy hospital-based users and 1,279 physician practices replied to the Black Book polls (@blackbookpolls) conducted in Q4 2017 and Q1 2018. As cybersecurity threats endure and evolve, care teams seek to maintain secure communications that ensure patients receive essential care.

Sixty-three percent of study respondents report ongoing challenges with buy-in of general mobile adoption strategies and related enterprise technology execution but 85 percent of hospitals and 83 percent of physician practices are engaging secure communication platforms between care teams, patients and families.

“When relying on cloud services and third-party servers to manage and route messages, end-to-end encryption that reflect HIPAA’s privacy and security requirements exchanging health data are safeguarding against breaches,” said Doug Brown, president of Black Book Market Research.

Niney-six percent of hospitals are budgeting and/or are investing in comprehensive clinical communication platforms before the close of 2018.

“Stakeholders across the healthcare industry are in the quest of finding solutions to use comprehensive real-time data and connectivity cleverly to advance patient safety, productivity and profitability,” said Brown. “Organizations are adopting secure text messaging platforms because texts are convenient, as well.”

However, 30 percent of survey respondents stated they still receive text communications daily that included individually identifiable information such as patient birthdays, initials or partial to full names from unsecured sources.

Ninety-eight percent of hospitals and 77 percent of physician practices participating in the survey report they are using intrusion detection systems and secure emailing.

Black Book’s survey of 18 key performance indicators specific to the cybersecurity and privacy software and services revealed the vendors most highly regarded by current customers.

Doc Halo ranked first among physician organizations for Secure Communications Platforms in the 2018 Black Book Cybersecurity study of healthcare industry solutions. PerfectServe, Patient Safe Solutions, Vocera, Imprivata, Spok, OnPage, TigerText, Telemediq and Voalte also received high marks.

Spok scored top among hospital systems and inpatient organizations. Qlik, TigerText, Vocera, Doc Halo, Cerner and Imprivata were ranked among the best inpatient Secure Communications Platforms.

About Black Book
Black Book Market Research LLC, its founder, management and staff do not own or hold any financial interest in any of the vendors covered and encompassed in the surveys it conducts. Black Book reports the results of the collected satisfaction and client experience rankings in publication and to media prior to vendor notification of rating results and does not solicit vendor participation fees, review fees, inclusion or briefing charges, and/or vendor collaboration as Black Book polls vendors’ clients.

Black Book’s mission is to improve healthcare delivery by expanding the stakeholder’s voice from the front-line employee, IT and financial managers, clinical and nursing staff through the C-suite and board, as well as healthcare consumers.

See Black Book Market Research website for methodology, auditing, resources, comprehensive research and ranking data.