The challenge
DC2Vue helps streamline clinical workflows, enhance data accuracy, and ensure compliance with strict regulatory standards. The company needed a secure communication solution that solved the inherent challenges in exchanging healthcare data between providers, and between providers and patients.
Provider to provider
To coordinate the transfer of patient care, providers communicate sensitive information in discharge summaries, referrals and specialist letters. In most cases, standard protocols are built into Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems and allow hospitals and providers to communicate securely using the national communications protocol (Australia Gov Secure Messaging). This works well for providers with compatible EHRs, but not all health care professionals have this secure messaging capability.
Provider to patient
Patients need access to much of the same information as providers regarding their healthcare. While patient portals are intended to be the go-to source for patient information, these are not well adopted. There is a large cohort of healthy patients that don't want to sign up for and manage accounts to a different patient portal for every provider they interact with. Instead, these healthcare consumers prefer to receive their communication in a secure, ad hoc fashion with a link delivered directly to their email inbox, no account creation required.
"The most practical way to communicate leverages email and a browser, while simultaneously protecting the data from the inherent insecurities of those mediums."
From the case study · Data Capture Experts
The solution
DCE integrated the SendSafely API into their core EHR platform to address their secure communication needs. The result is a seamless provider experience when creating and sending secure communications, and a convenient and hassle-free receipt of the information on the receiving end.
Discharge summaries. Hospital customers configure custom email templates which are bundled into a SendSafely package for encryption and secure delivery, all seamlessly within the EHR. Patients receive a secure link in their email inbox, authenticate using a one-time pin code, and access the package from any modern browser. Accounts and passwords are not required. The package is automatically expired and unavailable for pick-up after a predefined number of hours.
Tracked delivery. Australian regulations require a discharge summary to be sent within 48 hours and have strict requirements around tracking delivery. Once the file has been delivered and opened, a SendSafely read receipt is fed back into DC2Vue and a colour-coding system in the EHR indicates the package has been picked up. Prior to SendSafely, providers would only know discharge summaries were "transported" but not know if they were opened. With SendSafely, the user who opened the file, where they opened it, and how many times it was opened is automatically tracked.
Outbound referrals. Providers referring a patient to an outpatient setting do so entirely within the EHR. They pick from a list of available Allied Health Professionals, select the appropriate clinical information to share, and click Send. Behind the scenes the SendSafely API creates the secure package and delivers the contents to the referred provider.
Inbound referrals. A SendSafely Dropzone serves as an inbound referral channel integrated into DC2Vue. Referrers upload relevant documents containing sensitive patient information, which are then automatically downloaded, decrypted and posted to the EHR for processing.
