HIPAA Compliant Video Conferencing
Delivered September 26, 2020. Contributor: Ahmed I.
Goals
Identify up to five HIPAA-compliant video conferencing applications besides Mend and Thera-LINK. Discuss their online consent feature, group features, meeting dynamics such as host privileges, number of participant restrictions, session notes/prescription, features for maintaining patient-doctor confidentiality, mode of payment, data sharing, data security, and ethical/legal implications for video conferencing. Additionally, also search for Group Psychotherapy for Telehealth, and examples of online informed consent forms for group telehealth. Refer to project scoping for an overview of proposed research methodology.
Early Findings
HIPAA Compliant Video Conferencing Platforms:
1. GoToMeeting: The platform provides face-to-face virtual appointments between patients and healthcare providers. - It is HIPAA compliant, by offering a comprehensive Business Associate Agreement (BAA), in addition to providing technical security safeguards to transmit sensitive patient data securely.
- Provides secure access anywhere, on all devices with LogMeIn’s easy-to-use solutions.
- To continue operations from home, the doctor's office entire phone system can be accessible remotely via desktop, laptop, or mobile devices. Thus, allowing easy exchange of calls, messages, and text through one application, with no hardware requirements.
- For identity security, applications are protected with encryption and multifactor authentication. Details of extensive technical safeguards can be accessed here.
2. Zoom for Healthcare: Zoom offers HIPAA-compliant video conferencing platform with the following integrations: - High-quality HD video and audio even in low bandwidth environment.
- HIPAA-compliance and security achieved with Business Associate Agreement (BAA), and PIPEDA/PHIPA compliance with 256-bit AES encryption.
- Feature for recording sessions
- Medical device integrations
- exam cameras, digital stethoscopes, and patient’s electronic health records.
- Enhanced collaboration features
- allowing doctors to collaborate with other specialists by annotating directly on the shared screen, which will be visible to all attendees.
- Other features include: Patient waiting room
, Mute/unmute tool
, In-app file sharing
, chat messenger tool, transcripts of recordings
, whiteboard tool
for drawing and explanation, and AES 256-encryption.
- Medial device integrations like blood pressure monitors, Fitbit, and wireless scales.
- Allowing seamless sharing of patient electronic health records, lab results, radiological imaging and findings.
- Patients can create and share mood charts, upload food diaries. and also send their photographs for medical examination purposes.
- Interactive patient waiting rooms - virtual branded space prior to doctor's appointment, during which patients watch educational videos, and access live chat support.
- Other important features include: electronic prescriptions, virtual intake forms
, live annotation and screen sharing
, ability to add in additional care team members during an appointment
, patient self-scheduling
, post-visit patient surveys
, auto-confirmations via SMS and email
, and VSee compatible medical equipment.
- The basic telemedicine plan which covers most of the video-conferencing tools is free, doxy.me also offers two paid plans with provide more patient management features such as: unlimited session length
and number of sessions, personalized room with a unique URL address
, HD audio/video
, Chat messenger
, meeting history
, browser notifications
, text and email reminders
, end-to-end encryption
, and breach insurance.
- The platform provides a medical practice management platform ranging for appointment bookings, to virtual appointments, billing, insurance, and follow-ups. Other features can be found here.
- The platform offers insurance processing, which is uniquely offered by SimplePractice Telehealth when compared against other online telehealth providers.
- They offer a 30-day free trial, while the plan costs $10/month, per clinician. Each insurance claim is billed at 25 cents per claim.
Other HIPAA compliant telemedicine platforms include:
7. Mitel: This platform offers doctor-patient communication over cloud-hosted phone system. Preliminary Research Strategy:
Our preliminary research indicated that there are a couple of telehealth providers which offers HIPAA-compliant video conferencing. In addition, these platforms provide a wide range of services ranging from scheduling the appointment to billing, and even processing insurance claims. Most of these platforms are available after purchase except doxy.me.
This document is meant to outline the research strategy for a future in-depth research on HIPAA-compliant video conferencing platforms. This document serves as a ground work for Wonder Specialist Researcher to research on the subject matter in a clear and concise manner based on project scopes, while addressing the project goals as outlined in this strategy document.
Proposed next steps:
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