SANTA MONICA, CALIF.  May 16, 2013 -TigerText, the leader in secure, real-time messaging for health care and enterprise and AirWatch, the global leader and innovator in mobile device security and the largest Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) provider, today announced a partnership to offer a solution that allows health care organizations to secure their mobile platform and all text message and email communications. The solution has been chosen by Community Hospice of Texas, giving them the ability to securely send messages, images and files within the TigerTextPRO application, fully integrated with AirWatch’s EMM platform.

“Because mobile devices and texting are core to our daily workflow, Community Hospice of Texas realized it needed both an enterprise mobility management solution, which includes mobile device management, and also a HIPAA-compliant texting solution for all members of our team,” says David Swart, Director of IT at Community Hospice of Texas.  “We were lucky to find two solutions that work together, AirWatch, to address our MDM needs, and TigerText, for our secure messaging needs.  We have seamlessly deployed both solutions to all of our team members’ devices and are extremely pleased with the results – improved mobile functionality, security and utility in our day-to-day workflow.”

“Mobile messaging has become so ubiquitous both outside and inside the workplace, that the importance of communicating sensitive, private data in a secure, encrypted way across platforms and devices is greater than ever,” says Brad Brooks TigerText Co-Founder and President.  “That’s why we’re excited to offer our secure text-messaging solution on AirWatch’s enterprise mobility management platform. Through our partnership, organizations like Community Hospice of Texas can continue to safely protect important company or health information to enhance communication and workflow across all their devices and platforms in a secure, HIPAA-compliant manner.”

 “AirWatch is committed to providing the broadest device, application,and content management security possible,” says Brian Anderson, channel sales manager, AirWatch’s. “We’re thrilled that our partnership with TigerText allows us to extend our secure offering from the device to messaging, with TigerText’s secure, HIPAA-compliant message platform working seamlessly with our EMM platform, just as with Community Hospice of Texas and other joint customers.”

With the rise of BYOD in the workplace, unsecure SMS text messages have a greater risk of being exposed through lost devices or general data leakage outside the organization. TigerText solves this problem by offering a fully encrypted, SaaS platform for secure text messaging that is used in over 1000 healthcare facilities across the US and is delivering more than 1 million secure messages each day.  Administrative controls provide additional security features such as pin lock, remote wipe, and a controlled message lifespan to safeguard corporate communications, which complement the security features offered by AirWatch with its EMM services.  Images and large files can also be securely sent within the TigerText application.

For more information on the TigerText integration on AirWatch’s EMM platform, visit: http://tiger.tt/airwatchrelease

About TigerText

TigerText is the leader in secure, real-time messaging for health care, enterprises, and individuals.  TigerText allows healthcare providers and businesses to create a private and secure mobile messaging network with their own smartphone. More than 1,000 facilities have adopted TigerText, including leading organizations like Memorial Hospital at Gulfport, the University of Kentucky HealthCare, and Scottsdale Health Partners which rely on TigerText to comply with industry standards and replace unsecured SMS text messaging that leaves protected health and other confidential information at risk.  TigerText’s speed, compatibility, and ease of use accelerate workflows and improve employee satisfaction.  For more information visit: www.tigertext.com or https://www.facebook.com/TigerText or twitter.com/tigertextapp.

About Airwatch

AirWatch is the world’s largest mobile security and enterprise mobility management provider with more than 6,500 customers and more than 1,200 global associates. The largest customer base, combined with the largest research and development team in the industry, allows AirWatch to provide the broadest functionality at the lowest cost. The AirWatch platform, featuring industry-leading mobile device management and application management, also incorporates the most secure content management solution, Secure Content Locker^™. These solutions can be used stand-alone for unique BYOD requirements or as a comprehensive, highly scalable enterprise-grade mobility platform. 

The post TigerText and AirWatch Partner to Offer Comprehensive Mobile Security Solution for Healthcare appeared first on TigerText.

Everyone uses text messaging outside of the office. Whether to text a spouse, “could you pick up the bacon?” or text a colleague, “I’ll be 10 minutes late,” texting is super convenient and often times easier than making a phone call.

But using text messaging in the clinical setting, to communicate with patients or colleagues, requires a greater level of care. Thanks to HIPAA, the act of sending short messages is treated the same as sending an e-mail. Security measures such as encryption must be put into place to shield protected health information from being usurped by hackers or other third parties. Also: What might seem innocuous to a physician or practice manager could potentially violate HIPAA rules, depending on the content of the message or what information is revealed.

“If a clinician decides to send a text message rather than speaking to the patient directly, doing so could violate HIPAA,” Sharona Hoffman, professor of law and bioethics and co-director of the Law-Medicine Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, told Physicians Practice. “A violation would occur if the patient didn’t agree to this mode of communication and someone other than the patient saw the message, such as a child, friend, or spouse. Such a disclosure could have serious consequences for a patient if the third party learns private and sensitive medical information about the person.”

All of these concerns have fueled the market for secure messaging applications that allow doctors and other healthcare workers, as well as administrative staff, to text each other and patients without worrying about violating privacy laws.

One of the vendors in this emerging space is TigerText, which offers secure mobile messaging platform that helps healthcare organizations and other businesses improve work flow and reduce risk. At HIMSS13, TigerText unveiled a new service called TigerConnect, which lets any organization use the power of secure messaging to reach any colleague, customer, or partner in real time.

By using the platform, which “feels like BlackBerry Messaging for the enterprise,” physicians can coordinate care with each other through messages that are encrypted at transit and at rest, CEO Brad Brooks told Physicians Practice. The platform also allows clinicians to send messages based on their respective corporate e-mail addresses in lieu of personal phone numbers.

“A lot of physicians don’t want to give out their phone number,” said Brooks. “This is the way for them to participate in a [text conversation] without having to do so.”

While using an intra-office messaging app might appeal to some practices, others want to be able to leverage the convenience of text messaging for their patients. Two potential examples : practice staff sending appointment reminders to patients, or physicians using text messages answer basic patient questions.

In addition to using a security messaging app, practices might want to consider other measures.

“Even an appointment reminder could violate HIPAA because it would reveal that a patient is seeing a particular doctor [such as] a psychiatrist [or] fertility expert,” said Hoffman. “If healthcare providers want to text patients, they should get patients to sign an agreement that this is an appropriate method of communication.”

The post Texting Patients Securely at Your Medical Practice appeared first on TigerText.

By: LEENA RAO, April 25, 2013

Cloud storage company Box is making a big push into the healthcare sector today. Not only has Box received HIPAA compliance, but the company has announcing a new set of partners in the space, as well as an equity investment in drchrono, a startup that simplifies the professional lives of doctors by bringing electronic health records and much more to the iPad.

Healthcare is an enterprise vertical for Box, and is growing fast, says co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie. The company even hired Missy Krasner, who helped found Google Health, as a healthcare advisor.

In the past year, Box’s sales in the healthcare industry grew more than 81 percent, with clients including Henry Ford Health System, Beaumont Health System, HealthTrust Europe, Johns Hopkins HealthCare Solutions, Wake Forest Baptist Health, San Juan Regional Medical Center and Garden City Hospital.

The company is also announcing that a number of new healthcare startups are using Box’s API and platform including Umbie DentalCare, TigerText, Doximity, Medigram, PostureScreen Mobile, iMedViewer, iPaxera, Medi-Copy, and Healthtap. And Box has made an undisclosed investment in drchrono through the Box Innovation Network.

Part of making this big push into healthcare is getting the certifications that allows healthcare providers and companies to store medical information in the cloud. Box says it is now HIPAA compliant and is considered a secure and trusted platform for protected health information (PHI), personal health record files (PHRs), and is able to securely serve clinical researchers, healthcare systems and health insurance providers.

The company explains that there are a number of ways for healthcare companies to use Box (besides via a partner app like drchrono). For example, a doctors’ office would store a patient’s medical record or clinical summary in the cloud, or share clinical documents, images and medical records within or between differing EHR systems or even patients.

As Box readies for an IPO in the coming year, going deep in verticals like healthcare will help the company’s top line. And the fact that healthcare systems are securing medical information with Box is a testament to the platform’s security, which is another huge product development area for the year.

The post With HIPAA Compliance, Cloud Storage Platform Box Makes A Big Push Into Healthcare; Invests In Drchrono appeared first on TigerText.

SANTA MONICA, CA, April 25 2013 – TigerText, Inc., the leader in secure real-time messaging for health care and enterprise, today announced an API integration with Box that allows its customers to use the TigerText secure messaging platform to send and receive files stored on Box’s cloud content sharing and collaboration platform. TigerText users can now securely access information hosted on Box from their mobile devices or computers making it easier than ever to send files of all sizes in real-time and stay HIPAA compliant. TigerText is already used in over 1000 health care facilities across the US including leading institutions like Adventist Health, Scottsdale Health Partners, Stamford and University of Kentucky and is delivering more than one million secure messages each day.

“CIOs everywhere are seeing employees transfer important and sensitive information to mobile devices, along with the growing trend of bring your own device (BYOD) to work. In addition, the need to not eat up precious bandwidth and storage with large files has led all types of organizations to the cloud,” said Brad Brooks, president and co-founder, TigerText. “Integrating with Box is an exciting step as it lets us extend the valuable benefits of secure mobile messaging to customers who are utilizing the cloud, with peace of mind that their sensitive information is safe regardless of where they access it from. Whether they are coordinating among caregivers, collaborating on research or consulting with patients Tiger Text secures their communications in a compliant and user friendly manner.”

With TigerText and Box, users can:
• Send files to any PC, Mac or mobile device
• Bring enterprise-class cloud storage into secure texting work?ows
• Set time limits on a recipient’s ability to access ?les
• Recall sent texts to prevent further access
• Stay compliant with SOX, HIPAA and other security and privacy regulations

“Healthcare IT leaders have a massive opportunity to use cloud technologies to centralize the management of healthcare-related information to yield more expedient care and efficient operations,” said Whitney Bouck, general manager of enterprise at box. “By integrating with leading applications, like TigerText, we’re providing the best way for our healthcare customers to securely and intuitively share information between people and applications.”
The API integration with Box is available on both the TigerTextPRO and TigerText consumer platforms. For more information about this integration visit: www.tigertext.com/box.

The post TigerText Announces Integration with Box appeared first on TigerText.

California Healthcare News

You’re running late so you text a heads-up to the person you’re meeting.  Your project team texts constantly and keeps the instant messaging system chiming with exchanges. It’s only natural that doctors and medical staff want the same convenience and immediacy to coordinate patient care. The issue? Risk to privacy and security of patient personal health information (PHI).

As covered entities, hospitals are under scrutiny to assure compliance with HIPAA and HITECH Rule requirements. Yet the tried-and true pager is antiquated and non-conducive to optimal workflow in a busy hospital, and the inevitability of mobile device use is apparent to all. Health and Human Services (HHS) has recently rolled out a mobile education initiative to help physicians and healthcare organizations reduce risk and protect patient PHI when using mobile devices.

The potential for more efficient workflow and the need to reduce the pager response bottleneck are what led Torrance Memorial Medical Center to TigerText, a fully encrypted, SaaS platform for secure text messaging. Torrance Memorial is using the application among physicians and case managers in Torrance Memorial Hospitalist Associates (TMHA), which handles close to 50% of all the patients in the hospital and treats up to 140 patients per day. Dr. Alexander Shen, the TMHA Medical Director, elaborates on a primary reason behind the switch to secure text messaging, “The triage of importance when a physician receives up to six pages at a time becomes not just a day-to-day problem, but also an hour-to-hour one. With a pager system, there’s no way to tell what is a true emergency and what could wait a couple of hours. We’d decided that if TigerText could work for our hospitalist group, it could work house-wide.”

People use mobile devices every day for every facet of their lives. But as Brad Brooks, CEO of TigerText, says, “You have nurses, doctors, caregivers all naturally gravitating towards text messaging via their mobile for daily communicationin their workflow. All the content lives on their phones, which creates all types of risks for PHI exposure. So we address HIPAA compliance and recipient authentication, two key concerns for the healthcare industry.”

Communication ease is facilitated through integration of the organization’s active directory into the application, so users don’t have to know the mobile number of the person they’re contacting – it can only go to the intended recipient. Because it’s internal (intranetwork), the exchange happens at a speed similar to instant messaging. Delivery and “read” confirmations let the sender know what happened and when, providing reassurance and reducing disruption. Brooks says, “Our aim is to help create efficiency in their workflow and improve physicians’ ability to respond quickly, with priority channels, while also reducing risk of unintended PHI disclosure. The platform is as simple to use as a regular text message, yet the message stays encrypted during transit and at rest.” An organization can also set a limited lifespan for messages, which means they are wiped from a mobile device after a specific period of time. The message remains within the organization’s server for records and historical purposes.

According to Shen, TigerText came out ahead of other vendors because their interface has proven friendlier, plus, “We talked to larger vendors, but none of them offered a pilotstyle program that would let us get proof of concept down before adopting it house-wide. We’ve been able to roll it out within our hospitalist group, then to the nurses and now are going house-wide.”

TMHA has also been able to streamline, and will eventually eliminate the “tether” effect of multiple communication devices (pagers, landlines, answering services) and reduce to one device. TigerText has worked with them toward complete elimination of the pager device by implementing a pager-type application feature that forwards directly to the texting application on the mobile device.

A voicemail transcription feature sends voice messages as a text, with an audio file attachment. There are multiple options and modes for sending a message, whether dialing a number or sending from another secure device.  The non-intrusive nature of the application has proven popular with doctors. As Shen says, “Because we’re not playing phone tag, we are more accessible to the patients who are in front of us, yet can be truly responsive to inquiries from other doctors and medical staff while easily prioritizing care needs.” Traditional modes of contact are all covered with one secure SaaS. “We gain workforce efficiency and secure messaging, all without our doctors, nurses and other medical staff learning a completely new system or communication method.”

The post Torrance Memorial Medical Center uses Secure Text Messaging to Optimize Workflow, Coordinate Care appeared first on TigerText.

Your smartphone knows more about you than any other device, and it can so easily get into the wrong hands.

The post How to Shield Yourself From Smartphone Snoops appeared first on TigerText.

You need to ask questions like:

• Who do we want to use the network?
• Do we want to control access to data or the network based on job function?
• Do we have enough network resources for the additional load?

Blunder # 2 – No BYOD policy

http://www.hipaatext.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/BYOD-Policy-20130213.pdf

Blunder # 3 – Give access to all data

BYOD seems like a big problem, but real productivity gains can be had if BYOD is implemented correctly. Take it in small steps and remember to focus on data and the user. BYOD is the future of IT, but it will take time and effort to implement it correctly.

Blunder # 5 – Lost devices

The post Top 5 BYOD Blunders When Trying To Realize The Productivity Potential Of Workers Bringing Their Own Devices To Work appeared first on TigerText.

By: Brad Brooks, TigerText Co-Founder & President

March 26, 2013

      The little waves, with their soft, white hands,

      Efface the footprints in the sands,

      And the tide rises, the tide falls.

         -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I was reading this poem with my daughter the other day and thought if only life were that simple now. Unfortunately footprints today last a great deal longer as Hillary Clinton recently discovered through the Guccifer hacking scandal that has engulfed herself and other such notable figures as Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr.  According to reports, a hacker broke into Clinton confidante Sydney Blumenthal’s AOL email account and pilfered several confidential communications (including classified documents) sent to him by Secretary Clinton.

As CEO of TigerText, I am in the business of secure messaging and thus was not surprised that a secretary of state might be sharing such sensitive information with a close former colleague who was a civilian. We all find ourselves from time to time wanting to gain the guidance of a close friend or family member on sensitive matters and email or text message are often the simplest and quickest way to transmit information. Unfortunately, we don’t always consider that once we hit the Send button we lose control of that information. We are at the mercy of the recipient to treat that information as sensitively as you may deem it.  Even if we understand there is a risk of hacking we don’t want to give up the convenience of a fast communication to mitigate this risk. Our digital footprints don’t get washed away over time but rather remain there indefinitely for someone to potentially access and use for some other purpose.

For many like former Secretary Clinton, it is simply not practical to telephone their friend with every sensitive detail they want to share. We reflexively type out a message and hit send without thinking about longer-term consequences.

Indeed this is exactly why we recently introduced a feature to TigerText called “Message Anyone” that allows a sender to send a self-destructing TigerText to anyone’s email or mobile number via text message.  As more and more confidential information is being transmitted electronically to people’s mobile devices and desktops, the importance of the sender retaining control of how long that message lives is becoming that much more critical.

As is so often the case tech-savvy teenagers have figured out this need ahead of everyone else as evidenced by their rapid adoption of mobile app SnapChat. Commentators who refer to SnapChat as a sexting app have actually missed the point and don’t understand that the volume of snaps being sent cannot be explained by sexting alone. In actuality, the vast majority of content being sent are silly photos that kids don’t want living forever as part of their permanent record on Facebook or some other social media platform.

Likewise, I bet that Hillary Clinton wishes the same today about the numerous off the record emails she sent over the years to her close confidante Mr. Blumenthal. We all deserve that right as private and even public citizens.

The post The Little Waves appeared first on TigerText.

Despite having one of the most technically advanced healthcare systems in the world, the United States continues to struggle with the most basic of tasks – efficient communication and care coordination amongst different providers.

Poor communication shows up most glaringly with readmissions which is, as the Wall Street Journal recently wrote,  “a vexing problem” that costs Medicare an estimated $26 billion a year and affects nearly 1 in 5 beneficiaries.  Transitioning a patient from the hospital to the home is a tenuous period and not enough focus is spent on this seemingly mundane period in the care for a patient.

A study by researchers at Yale and Columbia University of 3 million Medicare patients observed between 2007 and 2009 found that almost 25% of those with heart failure and 20% of heart attack patients and 18% of those with pneumonia were readmitted within 30 days, often for the same condition but also for a wide variety of other diagnoses. These numbers are staggering and, as the baby boomer population gets older,  will undoubtedly explode unless we start to rethink how transitions of care are handled for patients moving from inpatient to out-patient.

As an orthopedic surgeon, I can state unequivocally that the post-hospitalization period is an extremely vulnerable time and requires rethinking. The current mindset is to simply get the patient out of the hospital and hopefully their discharge follow-up magically works its way out as the patient transitions to outpatient care. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Patients do not get what they need, and the lack of communication and coordination falls squarely on the hospital and providers with whom care is provided.

In turn, ObamaCare will introduce various penalties and rewards for health systems in an effort to reduce readmissions through better discharge planning and coordination, followed by improved home based follow-up and improved patient education.

Hospitals need to set up multi-disciplinary transitional care teams of providers to help shepherd patients from inpatient to outpatient. The heart and soul of this will involve leveraging existing technologies to create better communication amongst the various providers as well as the patient. Patients should be given a single contact, which is available 24/7 so that they could be guided through this transition and not simply rush back to the hospital, where the emergency room defaults to the most conservative option, which is readmission.

EMRs were an important first step in creating a single repository of data that can supply a fountain of information. But now it is incumbent on health systems to embrace communication technology to allow EMRs to become more actionable. We have the technology to create HIPAA compliant group messaging centered on a specific patient with multi-disciplinary providers able to see the same information and instantly apprise each other as new information becomes known.  Instead, what we are currently deploying is a wonderful but expensive new information system that is fundamentally underutilized in every day workflow.

The post Rethinking Readmissions appeared first on TigerText.

Is it acceptable for physicians to text patient orders to the hospital? No, answered the Joint Commission in a 2011 statement. But that doesn’t mean that physicians don’t do it, despite the commission’s concerns that texting makes it difficult to verify the sender’s identification and that texts aren’t archived for validation purposes. Physicians still text because it is time-efficient, convenient, and they’re used to doing it in their everyday lives.

For an idea of the kinds of scenarios in which texting makes sense, watch TigerText’s demo video. At one point a nurse asks the doctor to come down to the ER to look at a patient’s wound for signs of infection. Instead, the doctor asks for a picture message of the wound, and from the image he’s able to see that there’s no infection. As doctors’ workflows evolve with the times, TigerText aims to provide doctors with a secure way to carry out this type of communication.

“My brother who is 50 likes to say that basically nothing has changed on day-to-day health care communication since he was a resident,” CEO of TigerText Brad Brooks said of his brother, Andrew Brooks, MD, who is an advisor to the company. However, today the TigerText Pro solution is used by 350 enterprises, and the company’s announcement this week that it opened its API to third party developers means that its service could start to change more rapidly.

TigerText’s now open platform means that physicians who use it could start to communicate outside of the hospital. For example, imaging labs and diagnostic companies will be able to send lab results from their facilities to physicians via TigerConnect, which Brooks describes as a conduit. They can also see when their files were delivered to and viewed by the physician, saving the labs the time of having to track doctors down by phone.

Brooks talked about a couple of other use cases made possible by the open API. TigerText has already integrated with AMiON, a physician schedule manager. The integration allows doctors to use their mobile device or computer to type in queries like “Dr. Green” or “4 p.m.” to find out when a specific doctor is on call or to find out who’s on at a particular time.

There’s also the possibility of introducing patient applications into the mix. TigerText will provide a Software Development Kit for companies that want to make use of TigerText’s already developed secure messaging. Brooks sees this as as way for them to move personal health information from a patient to a physician. “It takes a lot of time. We’ve got 25 engineers working on this full-time,” Brooks said. “Why not just rent our system effectively, and drop our SDK into your app so that you now have messaging?”

TigerText is currently moving one million messages a day across its system. It will be interesting to see how the open TigerConnect affects the volume of information traveling to physicians via text and if the system can help to nudge hospital communications into the twenty-first century.

The post TigerText Opens Its API TigerConnect appeared first on TigerText.