Due to the soaring demand for secure telehealth services amid COVID-19, award-winning consulting and technology firm, Maven Wave (an Atos company) has deployed telehealth services that support HIPAA compliance through a groundbreaking integration between G Suite’s video conferencing platform, Google Meet, and Epic. Maven Wave designed this secure integration for Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA), a leading regional Harvard-affiliated health system based in Massachusetts.
With Maven Wave’s support, the health system accelerated this project to launch within a few weeks instead of a few months or longer. Comprised of two acute care hospitals, 13 community care centers, and 125,000 primary care patients using Epic software for its electronic health records, CHA had been in the planning process for telehealth for the past two years. But once the pandemic hit, it sped up the process and offered an avenue for CHA to provide the same patient experience of connecting with a care team for a visit virtually.
“Although the federal government granted a temporary waiver to use non-compliant HIPAA platforms during the coronavirus emergency period, this places patients and healthcare systems at risk long-term,” said Patrick Crotty, Managing Director of Healthcare at Maven Wave. “Since not all video platforms are equipped with security measures to protect personal health information, patient connections could compromise medical records and conversations, depending on the platform used. By developing this cloud-based integration between Google Meet and Epic, healthcare organizations can securely perform telehealth services throughout the pandemic and moving forward. We are proud to create this seamless, secure integration that makes HIPAA-compliant telehealth simple for patients and providers alike.”
With security breaches on the rise during the pandemic, this platform is highly secure, only allowing those who are authenticated into the tool on the provider side to launch Meet visits. Furthermore, Maven Wave’s connector scales to any provider size without the hospital’s information technology department needing to intervene. Because Google Meet is part of G Suite, users will encounter no additional fees; whereas, bringing another telehealth platform onboard would saddle providers with additional and ongoing expenses. Additionally, the framework allows for multiple languages, and organizations can customize their virtual waiting rooms.
“Google Meet’s functionality, flexibility and security were critical in supporting our rapid and inspiring conversion to a completely different model of care during the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Brian Herrick, MD, Chief Information Officer of Cambridge Health Alliance. “Our patients have appreciated the ability to easily connect with their care teams virtually and experience a genuine alternative to an in-person visit, while the integration to our electronic medical record saves our providers time and ensures continuity of care.”
Maven Wave continues to change the current paradigm to work in the cloud, thus improving productivity and the delivery of care. Maven Wave’s deep expertise in Google Cloud and technologies that support healthcare such as machine learning and IoT coupled with the company’s 10 Google Cloud Partner Specializations and three consecutive Google Cloud Services Partner of the Year awards for North America, empowers healthcare organizations to shift to digital with solutions that are agile, rooted in analytics, and built in the cloud.
To learn more about Maven Wave’s Google Cloud partnership, click here. Watch a Maven Wave overview video here.
To read the full announcement about Maven Wave’s HIPAA compliant telehealth services deployment, click here.
