Jun 12 2013
DigiCert, the leading high-assurance digital certificate provider, and DataMotion, an innovative health information service provider (HISP) with more than 14 years of experience in secure data delivery services, today announced a groundbreaking partnership to expand common dual-mode certification for commercial and federal use for the healthcare industry. The partnership promises to improve patient care by making it much simpler for federal and non-federal organizations to engage in the secure electronic exchange of healthcare information.
The DigiCert/DataMotion partnership is a major step forward in fulfilling the vision of DirectTrust, an independent non-profit trade association tasked with overcoming secure data transfer challenges related to the Direct Project. Overseen by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the Direct Project is a federal healthcare initiative fostering a standard method to securely exchange electronic healthcare information. It is aimed at ensuring compliance with federal privacy requirements and improving patient outcomes.
The partnership makes DataMotion the first HISP to use DigiCert's dual-mode Direct Med Certificate Authority (Direct Med CA) in the DirectTrust Transitional Trust Anchor Bundle. The Bundle is a collection of trust anchor certificates from HISPs that meet common policies and practices for transmitting healthcare data across geographies and technologies. It eliminates the need for HISPs to manually exchange trust anchors, avoiding complex legal hurdles and one-off contracts. Direct secure messaging leverages the Internet and is far more efficient and secure than fax-based communication. As a result, participating HISPs can quickly help healthcare organizations, providers and patients to communicate in a way that is Direct-compliant and with an expanding community of trusted partners.
"The DigiCert Direct Med CA leverages policy processing capabilities to make the Direct protocol much more efficient to implement. This breakthrough eases certification difficulties that have threatened to stall adoption of the Direct Project," said DigiCert's Vice President of Government/Education Relations and Senior PKI Architect, Scott Rea, also a member of the Board of Directors for DirectTrust. "We need a national security and trust framework with a foundation of standards-based accreditation, supported by technology to easily on-board healthcare providers. Because our Direct Med CA facilitates commercial and federal use for multiple trust assurance levels, more providers will now be able to quickly and safely exchange information more efficiently. By partnering with DataMotion - a leading HISP with a secure data delivery pedigree - we're able to get this to market quickly and help build the DirectTrust community."
DigiCert has been at the forefront of Direct-related innovation and was first to issue Direct-compliant Federal Bridge Certification Authority certificates for Federal agencies to interoperate with non-federal organizations. Combined with digital certificates for commercial entities, the Direct Med CA can now serve all of healthcare with basic and medium assurance levels. By incorporating this capability into its HISP services, DataMotion is now able to offer a turnkey solution that will enable electronic health record (EHR) vendors and their customers to easily meet real-world healthcare communications needs.
"This takes a huge burden off of healthcare providers by greatly simplifying their use of Direct messaging," said DataMotion Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Bob Janacek. "Through this partnership EHR vendors now have a comprehensive solution for Direct communications, resulting in an easier path for providers to achieve Meaningful Use Stage 2 attestation, and better healthcare outcomes for patients."
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