Secure Texting for Healthcare Services in Practice
To best demonstrate how secure texting for healthcare services works, we would suggest an illustration involving a smaller healthcare service in which medical professionals access encrypted ePHI by using a secure text messaging app downloaded onto their mobile device or desktop computer.
After medical professionals identify themselves with a unique login and PIN code, the secure text messaging app connects medical professionals to others within the designated, and private, hospital network. Medical professionals can send and receive secure text messages from their mobile devices or desktop computer to other authorized users within the same private network. Patient files, images and lab results can be shared securely when attaching them to a secure text message and multiple parties can join existing discussion threads to collaborate on healthcare issues.
The platform has administrative controls to further ensure HIPAA compliance. Administrative controls exist to assign message lifespans so that messages are deleted and archived automatically, remotely retract and delete messages, time out an authorized user´s mobile device if it has been inactive for a period of time, and remove a user from the private network if their mobile device is lost or stolen.
If this brief explanation is expanded to account for healthcare services that operate in the community or in multiple locations, it is not difficult to visualize how healthcare services can text securely. The logistics of implementing a secure text messaging solution may be more complicated depending on the size of the organization, but the principle of secure texting for healthcare services remains the same.