As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, remote communication is no longer just useful, it has become essential in all sectors of society. None more so than in the healthcare industry. Messaging software tools enable physician-patient communication, as well as cross-departmental communications between healthcare providers.
The protection of sensitive patient information must remain the number one priority when employing healthcare messaging tools. It is imperative that healthcare organizations and other covered entities adopt a secure means of communicating with their patients. All communications must comply with the appropriate healthcare standards and regulations, including HIPAA legislation. Using a HIPAA-compliant messaging application ensures that healthcare providers remain fully compliant when transmitting Protected Health Information (PHI) and avoid any costly data breaches.
Top 12 HIPAA-Compliant Messaging Software
As you strive to implement HIPAA-compliant communication into your healthcare organization, we have reviewed some leading HIPAA-compliant messaging apps to find the top 12 choices:
1. Luma Health
Luma Health provides healthcare professionals with an intuitive Patient Engagement Platform designed to meet all of their communication needs. It offers solutions for patient scheduling, acquisition and retention, contactless check-in, secure chat, and telehealth appointments. The platform also delivers a range of COVID-related solutions, including vaccination outreach and scheduling. Healthcare organizations can implement this platform with the reassurance that it fully meets the requirements of HIPAA compliance.
2. MedChat
MedChat provides a smart, HIPAA-compliant live chat tool for healthcare professionals and their patients, providing their services to many leading healthcare organizations. It provides easy and secure communication via a healthcare website, portal, or mobile app. Healthcare providers can take advantage of their two-way texting and internal chat capabilities to securely communicate between colleagues and patients. Patients and healthcare professionals can also securely share files across the platform. MedChat complies with all the necessary HIPAA regulations and executes a BAA with all of its customers, with enterprise clients receiving a custom BAA and a Master Service Agreement (MSA).
3. WELL
WELL offers a unified hub for secure healthcare messaging, connecting healthcare organizations and their patients through live chat, email, phone, and text. Reaching over 30 million patients, WELL provides unified outreach for patient interactions. Boasting HIPAA compliance and HITRUST CSF certifications, WELL is independently audited by third parties to ensure full compliance with regulations.
4. Halo Health
Halo Health is a cost-effective clinical collaboration platform developed for clinicians by clinicians. This cloud-based platform unifies secure and HIPAA-compliant role-based messaging, on-call scheduling, VoIP calling, and critical results and alerts. Trusted by numerous top healthcare organizations, Halo Health provides innovative on-call scheduling to ensure that messages are routed to the correct person instantly.
5. Klara
Founded in 2013, Klara streamlines workflow by providing HIPAA-compliant secure messaging, remote monitoring, and telehealth appointments. Communications are simplified as patients do not need to log in or download any additional apps. Klara ensures transmitted information remains safe and secure by utilizing one-time passwords, encryption, and user authorization.
6. Curogram
Curogram is a leading HIPAA-compliant texting and telemedicine platform that helps optimize medical offices’ front desks. The platform automates time-consuming tasks, streamlines processes, and creates efficiencies that benefit providers, staff, and patients. Curogram’s goal is to empower patients with a patient-centric healthcare messaging platform and universal patient portal, solving the many challenges patients face today including inefficient communication with their doctors.
7. Trillian
Trillian has provided individuals, businesses, and healthcare organizations with a secure instant messaging service for over 20 years. Healthcare organizations of any size can benefit from Trillian’s HIPAA-compliant and cost-effective messaging platform. There is even a free trial available. Trillian offers both native desktop and mobile software and delivers private and group chats, file sharing, and status and availability updates. Trillian has achieved HITRUST CSF Certification and incorporates a number of features to comply with HIPAA regulations, including encryption at rest and in transit, inactivity locking, and specified data retention periods.
8. OnPage
OnPage is an intelligent Incident Alert Management platform that ensures critical alerts are directed to the right people and responded to appropriately. It is a user-centric platform that offers secure encrypted instant messaging, on-call scheduling, alert escalation, and team collaboration. OnPage provides a secure communication solution to organizations within the manufacturing, managed services, and information technology sectors, as well as to the healthcare industry.
9. TigerConnect
As one of the leading cloud-native HIPAA-compliant chat apps available, Tiger Connect offers role-based messaging, private and group chats, and voice and video chat between physicians, patients, and affiliates. TigerConnect implements the necessary safeguards to protect PHI, including the issuance of a signed BAA, end-to-end encryption, auto-deletion of messages, and HITRUST certification.
10. Twilio
Twilio delivers a cloud communication platform, allowing healthcare professionals and their patients to engage using text messaging, voice calling, and video calling. Clients handling PHI must sign up to Twilio’s Security or Enterprise edition to receive a signed BAA and ensure HIPAA compliance. When building a HIPAA-compliant workflow, healthcare providers can take advantage of encrypted communication, HTTP authentication, static proxy, and public key client validation.
11. Health Engage
Health Engage, developed by Snap Engage, supports patient engagement through the delivery of secure, HIPAA-compliant live chat, chatbots, and SMS messaging. Clients benefit from a third-party HIPAA compliance certification, a signed BAA, data encryption, and audit logs. There are several competitively priced plans available to meet the specific needs of your organization.
12. NextCloud
NextCloud offers a free and fully open-source messaging service ‘NextCloud Talk’ alongside their comprehensive suite of content collaboration software. This software can either be self-hosted or easily managed by a third-party hosting provider. NextCloud developers have ensured that their platform employs all the necessary technical safeguards to comply with HIPAA guidelines, and NextCloud Talk would fit in seamlessly within an existing HIPAA-compliant infrastructure.
Protect the integrity of your PHI by using Altantic.Net
By choosing one of the leading HIPAA-compliant messaging platforms discussed above, you will be taking the appropriate steps to ensure that any PHI that you share is adequately protected. However, you must not overlook the importance of choosing a HIPAA-compliant provider to host your infrastructure, ensuring that all PHI is stored and handled correctly.
Atlantic.Net is a HIPAA-compliant hosting solutions provider with over 30 years of industry-leading experience. We offer fully compliant web and cloud hosting services and are independently audited by third-party auditors to ensure our solutions fulfill HIPAA, HITECH, PCI, GDPR, or SOC requirements. To find out more about the solutions that we offer, contact our sales team today!
This article was updated on March 29, 2022.
