IMS MAXIMS and Secure Exchange Solutions have announced a partnership to offer mobile, secure and cost-effective provider-to-provider and provider-to-patient communications to NHS organisations, GP practices and patients.
The joint effort between the award-winning provider of digital health transformation programmes and leading provider of interoperable, cloud-based, clinical data exchange technology, comes against a backdrop of the NHS being urged to move away from outdated communications technologies.
In recent months, health and social care secretary Matt Hancock has urged the NHS to “axe the fax”, “purge the pager”, and drop letters for email in patient communications, while issuing a tech vision for the development of IT in the NHS that puts a premium on flexible, cloud-based services.
“The current methods by which clinical and sometimes urgent information is exchanged in the NHS have come in for increasing scrutiny as concerns have grown that they are antiquated and expensive,” said Shane Tickell, chief executive of IMS MAXIMS.
“Recognising the shortcomings of some of the current systems in use, Matt Hancock has called on NHS organisations to plan for the introduction of modern, secure communications solutions. Our partnership with Secure Exchange Solutions, a leader in this field, is a direct response to that challenge.”
IMS MAXIMS and SES will immediately make available a simple, secure and seamless communication solution that is already delivering superior security and performance to thousands of healthcare providers and millions of administrators and patients in the US.
This solution is called SES DIRECT, which provides a variety of methods to connect to its secure data exchange platform, including SMTP and POP3 email clients (such as Microsoft Outlook and Apple’s iPhone email).
It comes with robust directory services, end-to-end message encryption, and easy integration options with healthcare applications including: electronic patient record systems, patient portals, clinical data repositories, patient health applications and GP systems.
“SES DIRECT is based on the DirectTrust framework, which supports secure, interoperable health information exchange at 140,000 organisations and nearly 2 million secure Direct endpoints,” said Dan Kazzaxz, the founder and chief executive of SES.
“The flexible and easy incorporation into existing applications and workflows allows for easy replacement of email systems, fax machines and pagers. We are delighted to partner with IMS MAXIMS to bring these proven solutions to the NHS community.”
