1. How Direct Secure Messaging can facilitate secure data exchange?

In recent times, Direct secure messaging tools have surpassed email communications in terms of convenience and strict data privacy concerns. From admissions to discharges—automated push notifications and pharmacy prescriptions, Direct secure messaging platforms are extensively used in care coordination solutions to facilitate seamless patient engagement.

The healthcare Interoperability rule ensures superior data privacy by confining healthcare data—which significantly supports remote patient monitoring. Healthcare organizations leverage advanced technologies to integrate multiple levels of data security—to ensure data privacy. Several Healthcare organizations even charge patients to access their records—adding another layer of data privacy and protection.

Direct communications are designed to be extremely flexible and can be integrated with multiple platforms like a mobile, email client, healthcare IT portals and more. To integrate the advanced features, the sender and the receiver would require a unique email address.

2. What is the role of record-based queries in care transitions?

Record-based queries are an integral part of Healthcare Information Exchanges and are extensively used in the healthcare data landscape. A common framework is created by a group of providers in a particular region—to facilitate data exchange between healthcare professionals. Say a patient’s data has to be accessed by multiple professionals across the entire care journey—from physician to diagnostics center, diagnostic center to hospital and from hospital to the nursing home—where record-based queries facilitate seamless and secure functioning of data exchange.

Healthcare technology solution companies provide modernized interoperability platforms to facilitate health data exchange between care providers. Besides hospitals and physicians, healthcare IT solution providers also create dedicated networks and Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (CCDA) for radiologists, laboratories, ambulatory care centers, and post-acute care providers.

This means that members who belong to a specific network can raise record-based queries from providers on the other systems—from anywhere around the globe. For instance, a Las Vegas doctor can query records of a vacationer from Chicago, who might have had a heart attack—if they are part of the same data-sharing network. This ensures that healthcare data exchange happens instantly during emergency situations as this—in the most secure way possible.

3. How Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can give complete view of patient data?

Healthcare APIs play a crucial role in connecting IT systems within a healthcare organization or provider network. For instance, if a patient engagement platform or any other healthcare software can automatically connect to another system, this is most likely powered by healthcare APIs.

When the interlinked systems mimic the same language as one another, the healthcare data from different systems combine as one patient record—enabling patients to get a 360-degree view of patient data including lab results, procedures, past visits to doctors’ offices and beyond. Even if the systems don’t interact in the same language, the patient data can work as supporting data to the primary record.

4. How cloud fax can accelerate foundational interoperability?

Fax remains the primary communication tool in the healthcare ecosystem—where a staggering 75% of medical communication happens over fax. However, major medical communication occurs through cloud fax—subsequently meeting the foundational interoperability standards of healthcare data exchange. Fax is a more simplified platform that does not require communication between interfaces to decode any technical language, since it looks the same from the sender and the receiver’s end.

Health professionals can quickly and easily interpret information on a piece of paper without requiring a legacy fax machine or a printer. Cloud fax powered by healthcare cloud technologies provides digital documents and solutions that can be organized in folders and larger document solutions—making it even simpler to integrate with your own interface.

Cloud fax helps hospitals and health systems achieve functional interoperability in the most simple and secure way—from hyper-connected healthcare organizations to care providers using legacy technologies.