A Canadian company is rolling out a cell phone-based approach for enabling secure encrypted access to medical, financial and other sensitive personal information.
The approach, already in use by members of a Blues plan in northeast Pennsylvania, holds the promise of giving individuals easy access to their personal health information. It gives consumers a secure way to provide that information to caregivers and and offers capabilities for conducting financial transactions with a device that the vast majority of Americans have and are familiar with using.
Other insurance plans are interested in the standards-based approach, which could jump-start the use of personal health records by a broad segment of the population.
The Diversinet Corp., based in Toronto, formally launched its MobiSecure Wallet and Vault products on Tuesday. Company officials say the products work together to create a secure encrypted platform that gives end-users secure access to their data and documents.
The Wallet turns a mobile phone into a kind of remote control device that consumers can use to display, fax or e-mail data stored in the MobiSecure Vault server or from other data sources, said Jay Couse, senior vice president of Diversinet. The phone serves as a token-like device, and the consumer has a password, thus providing two-factor authentication.
The service has been deployed by the AllOne Health Group Inc., of Wilkes-Barre, Pa., which provides a range of services for healthcare purchasers and payers. It developed AllOne Mobile using the Diversinet platform, and deployed it as an unbranded service to 350,000 members of Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania, Wilkes-Barre.
Full deployment to Blues members was completed in mid-June, said Stuart Segal, AllOne's vice president.
The current version of AllOne Mobile requires users to input their health information, but Segal said the company expects to offer a version later this summer that will pre-populate a user's record with a payer's claims data or pharmaceutical prescription information.
"From a personal health record perspective, it's designed to be agnostic and certain elements are pretty standard," he said. "As far as pulling claims information, it isn't that far of a reach to get (a payer) system to download to our platform and then push that out over the phone."
Diversinet and AllOne say the service will eventually enable consumers to make co-payments out of health savings accounts. More immediately, they expect the service to be improve the effectiveness disease management initiatives by giving more direct, timely and personalized interactions with members.