When we look into the past, present, and future, we find that the demand for the doctors is always high as we can see the increase in the number of deficiencies, diseases, and due to many other health issues faced by the people in their day to day life. A healthcare professional and a patients consultation have always been a confidential and also the HIPAA security rule state that a doctor needs to secure a patient’s electronically-stored protected health information(ePHI) by making use of proper administrative, physical and technical safeguards to assure the confidentiality, integrity, and security of his/ her health information. But is Skype / Whatsapp best tool for doctor-patient online consultations?
In the current generation, people have tight schedules, making it difficult for them to visit doctors. The process involves scheduling appointments and issuing tokens, which can be time-consuming and exhausting for patients, leading them to walk away.
In our digital world, many people are unaware of applications that simplify doctor-patient interactions, as traditional methods become more complex.
So, people find it easy to communicate with the doctors with the tools they are familiar with and comfortable with. Skype and WhatsApp are widely known for chatting and video calls. But the act of delivering the services over the Instant Messaging Application is not acceptable as it creates issues for the physicians or healthcare professionals who provide medical service through these instant messaging applications.
Therefore, it is very important to deliver medical services over Skype/Whatsapp. Let’s explore the points medical professionals should note before providing digital medical assistance to their patients.
- Even though Whatsapp and Skype make use of encryption, but they aren’t HIPAA compliant and cannot share PHI.
2. By procuring enterprise E3 or E5 packages, Skype for business can maintain HIPAA compliance.
3. Skype for Business must obtain a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) from Microsoft to comply with HIPAA. Additionally, it needs robust security measures to prevent unauthorized access and protect electronically stored patient health information (ePHI).
Therefore the enterprise messaging solution is built for doctors-patients chat as it follows the HIPAA compliance.
Conclusion:
It is very important to safeguard a patient’s health information, and it is the responsibility of every healthcare professional/ physician not to deliver the medical services through the instant messaging, video consulting applications like Skype / Whatsapp for doctor-patient online consultations which do comply with HIPAA or GDPR compliance.
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