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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This week, TigerText Inc., a Santa Monica based secure texting service, received a second round of funding totaling $8.2 million. The company received $2.2 million in seed funding in 2010. This brings the company’s total backing to over $10 million. Easton Capital and New Science Ventures led the Series A investment. A partner from each company, John Friedman from Easton and Somu Subramaniam from New Science Ventures, joined the board of TigerText as part of the funding.

This funding is intended to accelerate the development of TigerText Pro for Business, their messaging platform for corporations. This system is SOX secure, referring to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and allows users to communicate securely. This can include group messaging sessions about sensitive subjects or keeping an entire mobile salesforce up to date about pricing and policy changes.

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A new initiative developed by the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s Office of the Chief Privacy Officer, working with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights was launched recently to better understand the privacy and security implications of processing healthcare data via mobile devices.

The goal of the new initiative is to develop “an effective and practical way to bring awareness and understanding to those in the clinical sector to help them better secure and protect health information while using mobile devices.”

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