Cloud storage platform Box is making an aggressive push into the healthcare vertical announcing that it is now HIPAA compliant and has added 10 new healthcare application partners to address industry specific challenges. Out the gate, Box has also already started signing Business Associate Agreements (BAAs), in which it agrees to assume responsibility in safeguarding PHI under HIPAA guidelines. HITECH specifies that a BA’s disclosure, handling and use of PHI must comply with HIPAA Security Rule and HIPAA Privacy Rule mandates.
“This is one of the few verticals that we’ve really chosen to go after aggressively,” says Whitney Bouck, general manager of enterprise at Box. “We work with all different verticals and we know we can address a wide range of challenges, but healthcare is one of the top few that we’re really focusing on.”
Box’s sales in the healthcare industry grew more than 81 percent in the past year. Some of their healthcare industry customers include Johns Hopkins HealthCare Solutions, Henry Ford Health System, Garden City Hospital, HealthTrust Europe and Wake Forest Baptist Health.
“The consumerization of IT and evolution of the cloud are shaking up the healthcare industry,” says Julie O’Brien, head of industry marketing at Box.
“With four out of five doctors using mobile devices for work-related tasks, mHealth and BYOD are creating new challenges for CMIOs and CIOs at hospitals and large integrated delivery networks across the nation,” O’Brien says. “And as if that weren’t enough, provider and patient frustrations continue to mount over the lack of interoperability and file sharing in healthcare.”
Box’s 10 new healthcare platform partners fall into four categories of healthcare services:
- Clinical documentation: Drchrono, a cloud and web-based HER application accessible from iPads and iPhones; and Umbie DentalCare, a dental care web-based practice management system for dentists available on the desktop and tablet.
- Care coordination: TigerText, an encrypted SaaS platform for secure text messaging in a clinical setting; Doximity, an online professional network designed for U.S. physicians; andMedigram, a secure group messaging app for the hospital environment; PostureScreen Mobile, posture analysis screening and evaluation software for mobile devices.
- Interoperability: MedViewer, a DICOM viewer for viewing, communicating and sharing medical images on iPhone and iPad; iPaxera PACS Viewer, a PACS viewing app designed for iPad, iPhone and iPod; and Medi-Copy, which provides Release of Information (ROI) request services and creates electronic copies of patient medical records.
- Access to care: HealthTap, which provides users with personalized health information and free online and mobile answers from physicians.
Box is banking on HIPAA/HITECH compliance and applications partnerships to improve their annual revenue growth rate currently at 160 percent as they prepare for an IPO in the coming year.
