Coalese Corporation - Raven Secure Messaging

Raven Secure Messaging

Using email as a communications mechanism for sensitive and private medical information is not a viable approach due to issues with the usability of encryption for email, a reliance on error-prone manual intervention on the part of users and the lack of guarantees regarding security and privacy with the architecture of the internet's email infrastructure.

To facilitate secure and private electronic communication between physicians, allied healthcare workers and even patients using the Coalese Patient Portal, Raven includes an optional Secure Messaging feature. With Secure Messaging, sensitive communications never leave the Raven appliance, thus providing a high degree of security and privacy. Secure Messaging features are easy to use, being integrated into the Raven intuitive user interface. Any user that has passing familiarity with webmail-based email access will find Raven Secure Messaging to be a familiar experience. Raven Secure Messaging leverages Web 2.0 (AJAX) approaches to provide a rich and functional messaging paradigm, as illustrated in the following screenshot of a sample messaging session:

Raven Secure Messaging - Sample Screenshot

Messages are tagged with priority levels, with high priority messages highlighted in red. Messages can be sorted by Sender, Date Received, Priority or Subject with a single mouse click. A folder metaphor is used for message storage, where users can create folders and hierarchies of folders to suit their particular message retention needs and workflow. Full search capabilities are also available.

Raven's Secure Messaging feature facilitates better primary care collaboration by providing convenient, secure and private communications capability. For example,. this Secure messaging allows allied healthcare workers such as homecare nurses to more easily bring important patient welfare information to the attention of the primary physician. Or an EMT could easily, using a mobile device such as an iPhone, alert a primary care physician when they respond to a medical emergency with one of the physician's patients. Patients themselves can be enabled as more pro-active members of the wider healthcare team by being able to communicate with their physician electronically, should the clinic wish to offer such capability as part of a Patient Portal deployment.

Primary Care physician days are hectic at best, and thus it would not be realistic to expect busy physicians or other healthcare professionals to always pro-actively check their messages on a regular basis. To address this requirement, Raven Secure Messaging includes a number of notification mechanisms, to unobtrusively notify a user that “you have mail”. Raven Secure Messaging provides a small footprint Notifier application which can be installed on a user's computer, and which will pop up a notification dialog window when new messages arrive for that user.

Secure Messaging Notifier - Sample Popup (Microsoft Windows)

The Secure Message Notifier is highly configurable as to size, orientation, and how messages of different priority levels are handled. For example, high priority messages are typically highlighted in red and shown first in the popup list and require a manual dismissal of the window by the user while a popup containing only lower priority messages will automatically be dismissed after a user-configurable period of time. The clinic or user can configure the Notifier to behave the way they find most convenient and productive. Once installed, the Notifier will ensure that high-priority and critical messages are automatically brought to the attention of the recipient, who can then access Raven Secure Messaging with a single click on the Notifier popup window.

Received message notifications can also be delivered securely to a user's RSS Newsfeed reader, if desired. Raven Secure Messaging can also be configured, on a user by user basis, to send non-sensitive email notifications to a designated, external email address when a new message of a minimum priority level is received.

Secure Messaging features are integrated with Raven's comprehensive role-based access control mechanisms, and as such, it's a simple matter to allow only certain roles and/or users access to messaging capabilities. Secure Messaging is integrated with Raven's optional Cross-Clinic capabilities, and can thus be extended to allow secure messages to flow easily between multiple clinics and between clinics and PCN/LHINS/Regional users should the need arise for secure primary care communication across a wider network of healthcare workers.