Healthcare technology has made significant strides over the last few years. From the adoption of electronic health records to the automation of compliance efforts and cloud adoption, it may be surprising to learn that 90% of healthcare organizations still heavily rely on faxing for communications.
Fax machines are painfully ineffective for sharing information, not to mention the lack of privacy associated with this form of communication. There have been a number of breaches that are a result of simply faxing information to the wrong number. In December 2018, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), announced plans to eliminate fax machines in healthcare communications by April of 2020. Similarly, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has also called for an end to fax machine usage by 2020.
Electronic fax solutions or cloud faxing is a step in the right direction since those services typically allow admins to encrypt messages and apply some permissions to the file. The problem is that e-fax solutions lack flexibility and can be quite expensive.
Healthcare institutions have several options available today for modernizing their secure file transfer methodologies. End-to-end encrypted email is the most common and satisfies HIPAA compliance requirements. In many cases, communications are sent to a customer or a third party from a custom application. While an email gateway is a suitable option here, it’s one that our customers think is over-engineered for many use cases.
When an email is not the best option, Virtru offers organizations the ability to leverage the Data Security Platform within their own custom applications to create their own method of securely sharing sensitive data. With access via SDK in multiple languages and minimal development work, customer organizations have the advantage of using the Virtru technology and infrastructure that is available in our popular email applications, with the ability to customize the workflow to fit each unique situation. This alternative is more flexible in that there are no restrictions on data type, destination or file size. Not to mention, this solution is more cost-efficient as you don’t have to pay by the page as most eFax solutions are typically priced.
To learn more about how organizations leverage the Virtru Data Security Platform to secure file transfer workflows, grab a copy of our latest case study: Spring Venture Group, originally a Virtru email customer, extended our technology to secure a new custom workflow within a matter of days. Get in touch with us to see our data protection tool in action.