The HIPAA Privacy Rule deals with both the use and disclosure of Protected Health Information, or PHI, held by entities such as health care clearinghouses, employer sponsored health care plans, health insurers, and medical service providers that engage in certain transactions with patients. Because of the HIPAA laws, text messaging in healthcare has to be extremely secure; HIPAA complaint text messaging is mandated across the United States.
Interestingly, the Netherlands leads the world in medical practices that use electronic records, with 99 percent participation in electronic medical record keeping. Regardless, there are no less than 551 certified medical information software companies in the United States, and they collectively sell 1,137 software programs.
Because of advanced software, things like mobile health applications are available, which allow people and physicians to securely store and connect to medical records. Mobile healthcare apps can alleviate the need for text messaging in healthcare and make medical communication seamless and extremely secure.
The specialized healthcare mobile apps actually encrypt data on a phone then communicate it to the recipient, who then decrypts it. This helps to ensure patient privacy and HIPAA compliance. At the end of the day, HIPAA compliance is a very important priority among health care professionals, as it is a significant part of the doctor-patient confidentiality agreements, which if breached, can have serious consequences.