Use of DirectTrust secure electronic messaging soars in 2016

Use of DirectTrust secure electronic messaging between the patients, providers and other healthcare consumers through the Direct Project protocols for secure communications, grew importantly previous year, underscoring increasing national interest and activity in exchanging health information (HIE) during the care delivery procedure.

The service utilizes DirectTrust-accredited health information service providers (HISPs) that commit to complying with specific protocols for secure messaging.

More than ninety-eight million Direct message transactions were conducted during the year of 2016, in accordance to the vendor; more than 33.5 million messages were sent in the previous 3 months of 2016 alone. The service reports a total of 165 million transactions since it was inaugurated in the year of 2013.

The number of healthcare agencies using Direct message transactions rose to 71,000 previous year, in contrast with 52,000 in the year of 2015. A total of 41 HISPs now work with DirectTrust secure electronic messaging, and more than 350 certified electronic health records (EHRs) support the messaging service.

In addition to the certified EHRs, vendors mostly have several other products that support Direct—about 1500 other products are certified for the service.

“I did not expect growth to be this rapid,” claims David Kibbe, MD, president and CEO at DirectTrust. “That means we’ve to work harder so it stays reliable.”

Primary use cases for DirectTrust secure electronic messaging sustain to involve support of care coordination and clinical messaging for referrals and alerts, in accordance to Kibbe. “But w are also initiating to see Direct messaging for administrative and research data communications,” he adds.

DirectTrust soon will issue a white paper, significantly done by physicians and nurses using the service, with suggestions to EHR vendors and users on how to make better their products by mentioning features that best support Direct messaging.

Also, the service soon will support the capability to copy messages to other parties beyond those included in the exchange of information, and it also will support message notification, like informing a user that a message was victoriously received or the message was not delivered, Kibbe claims.