A recurring theme at the HIMSS 2013 conference and expo this week in New Orleans was the security of mobile health data.

With mobile technologies becoming central to expanded remote patient care and consultation, the challenge of securing patient information is growing by the day.

As a result, PerSysTek is behind a new solution that may rise to this very challenge.

Many of the vendors at HIMSS have great solutions meeting various mobile health (mHealth) needs but Physicians and Patients have been leery of adopting such technologies due to the security risk associated with mobile devices.

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The University of Kansas School of Medicine out of Wichita conducted an interesting study recently that asked physicians at pediatric hospitals what form of communication they prefer for “brief communication” while on the job.

Out of 106 physicians polled, 27 percent named texting their preferred method, compared to 23 percent that favored hospital-issued pagers and 21 percent that said face-to-face conversation.  Among the survey pool, 57 percent reported sending or receiving work-related text messages.  “We are using text messaging more and more to communicate with other physicians, residents and even to transfer a patient to a different unit,” lead investigator Dr. Stephanie Kuhlmann said in an AAP press release.  “The way that physicians are communicating appears to be shifting away from the traditional pager method.  Personally, I probably get 50 to 100 text messages during a shift,” she added.”

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With a lot of ambiguity surrounding how SMS can be properly implemented in healthcare messaging, the folks at mHIMSS have produced an excellent quick-reference guide that covers five frequently asked questions regarding the use of SMS in healthcare.

Covering everything from the technology needed to deploy SMS, to the many regulatory standards associated with SMS and the use of Short Codes, and even including “Personal Health Information (PHI)” within text messages, the doc provides an excellent reference point to those seeking more information on SMS in healthcare.

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It was announced today that Highmark – a Pittsburgh-based independent licensee of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association — has partnered with mobileStorm to power a new mobile messaging initiative to reach members, employees, group customers and the community at large on their mobile devices.

Highmark is currently implementing mobile campaigns to influence healthy behaviors for members as well as its own employee base, while also evaluating opportunities to use additional SMS initiatives to reach group customers and the general community.  Highmark is leveraging mobileStorm for Healthcare, the company’s multi-channel healthcare messaging system that enables both healthcare payers and providers to launch powerful one-to-many campaigns with a virtually limitless number of members.

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GE Healthcare and AirStrip Technologies have debuted a new wireless patient monitoring solution during the HIMSS12 conference on Wednesday.

Dubbed AirStrip PATIENT MONITORING, the new solution securely delivers patient monitoring information to critical-care physicians through iOS devices including iPhones and iPads, while helping physicians interact with, manipulate and zoom in on more than 100 clinical measurements and access physiologic data anytime, anywhere.  AirStrip received FDA clearance for the platform that drives the new patient monitoring solution back in 2010 and announced it obtained the CE Mark just last month.

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It’s been announced by Fiberlink, a company providing SaaS solutions for mobile device and application management, has debuted a new edition of its “MaaS360″ platform for the healthcare industry.

MaaS360 for Healthcare was designed to provide a single, unified view of policy and status reporting across tablets and smartphones for healthcare organizations.  The platform aims to help CIOs and others responsible for data and device security to identify and manage the “complex challenges of mHealth initiatives and data security risks to meet strict HIPAA compliance requirements.”

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It’s been announced that Polyglot Systems, who provides award-winning “Meducation” content to hard-to-reach patients through mobile web, apps and e-mail technology, has partnered with CellepathicRx to deliver its medication adherence solution through the latter’s mHealth platform.

Polyglot specializes in providing medication adherence solutions aimed at patients who have low health literacy or difficulty understanding English.  Through its Meducation content, patients and healthcare providers can access medication instructions that are written at a 5th to 6th grade reading level in any of over twelve languages, including English, Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean, Haitian Creole, Italian, French, Arabic, Russian, Bengali, Polish and others.  Instructions can also be printed in large fonts for those with impaired vision.  The solution even lets patients access online videos demonstrating proper medication use for medications that are especially hard to use and understand.

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