XMedius is a leading global provider of enterprise-grade solutions for Secure Document Exchange. We were thus interested in interviewing the company to know more about its services, and how it can benefit the healthcare industry.

Can you tell us more about XMedius?

Founded in 1996, XMedius is headquartered in Montreal Canada and operates in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific. The Company is a leading global provider of enterprise-grade solutions for Secure Document Exchange. Our XMediusFAX® on-premises and cloud Fax-over-IP (FoIP) products allow organizations to securely and efficiently exchange vital and confidential information. With more than 13,000 live deployments, addressing SMBs, large Enterprises, and Service Providers, XMedius solutions address a wide spectrum of markets including healthcare and pharma. With our expertise in the medical field and our flexible and cost-effective solutions, XMedius is able to meet the present and future requirements of healthcare organizations.

What advantages can your technology offer the healthcare industry?

Sensitive and confidential documents such as medical records, test results and prescriptions are exchanged daily by healthcare organizations. With healthcare data breaches on the rise, it is critical to ensure that Protected Health Information (PHI) is accessed, shared and stored in a secure and compliant manner.

Indeed, faxed documents that are sent to a fax machine in a public area such as a busy healthcare clinic are vulnerable to being seen or even stolen by unintended recipients. Patient information is protected by law, and strict regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) define procedures and guidelines for maintaining the privacy and security of individually identifiable health information, outline numerous offenses relating to health care and set civil and criminal penalties for violations. Failure to produce a requested document can result in loss of patient confidence and major fines.

Our priority is to enable workers in the healthcare industry share mission-critical files while keeping health information safe and intellectual property secure. The XMediusFAX® solution helps healthcare organizations address the challenge of delivering PHI and other documents, and has been expressly designed with the strictest security and compliance measures in mind.

XMediusFAX® also complies with ISO/IEC 27001 by ensuring that the security arrangements are fine-tuned to keep pace with changes to security threats, vulnerabilities and business impacts. Furthermore, XMediusFAX® reduces the hard costs associated with faxing and is highly scalable, giving healthcare establishments the flexibility to adapt to their evolving requirements.

Additionally, XMediusFAX® solutions provide the tools to electronically send and receive documents from desktops, Multi-Function Printers (MFPs) and mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. Further, our solutions allow users to automate the delivery of medical records and documents from a variety of clinical and back-office applications and EHR/EMR Systems, intuitively organizing them for quick retrieval and archiving. This provides healthcare organizations with the flexibility to securely distribute virtually any document from any application, using a centralized fax solution.

Finally, the XMediusFAX® solution eliminates the need for phone lines, toner and paper, and protects PHI better than traditional fax-machine technology. In the cloud version of our XMediusFAX® solution, software maintenance and upgrades are an integral part of the service offered and do not require IT involvement.

Healthcare functions that can benefit from our applications include:

• Pharmacies: Doctors can send prescriptions by fax to a pharmacy, which can then be routed to a work queue to be accessed online by the pharmacist for processing.
• Insurance: Faxing is still one of the most commonly-accepted ways to communicate billing and claims information.
• Medical Records: The expense of hardcopy storage can be reduced by allowing patient information to be automatically faxed into EMR systems.
• Physician orders: Our Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature intelligently routes incoming faxes based on content through a workflow process, where patient information is indexed and easily searchable.

What challenges does the healthcare industry face in terms of communication technologies?

In today’s connected world, almost all of the information we exchange is accessible at the touch of a button. This is especially true in the healthcare sector. Digital technology enabling EHRs (Electronic Health Records) and EMRs (Electronic Medical Records) are vastly improving the quality and efficiency of patient care and–potentially, at least–simplifying the work lives of healthcare professionals. However, exchanging PHI across different applications, with different devices and among different stakeholders can be hugely problematic.

Above all else, everyone in the healthcare sector needs to make absolutely sure that the information both sent and received is secure and in compliance with HIPAA regulations. The challenge is sharing both electronic and paper records in an efficient and secure manner between disparate systems and applications that may be outdated or insufficiently flexible.

With the multitude of file sharing solutions available today, exchanging information to improve patient care has never been easier and quicker. However, most of these solutions, like emails, SMS and enterprise file share and sync services, are not an option for healthcare institutions because of the disclosure risks inherent in exchanging sensitive information in plain text communications over the Internet. One of our challenges is to raise awareness and inform the healthcare community of the dangers and consequences related to the unsecured transmission of health records. It’s the healthcare establishment’s responsibility to ensure that the information it communicates to others remains strictly private and complies with federal law. The XMediusFAX® On Premises and Cloud solutions, coupled with the XMediusFAX® Connector for EHR/EMR systems, addresses all these needs.

How do you see Cloud and Fax Over IP (FOIP) technology for healthcare evolving over the next 5 years?

Leading healthcare institutions have embraced digital technology and the demand for digitalization and automation is increasing by the day. With a growing number of mission-critical business applications moving to the cloud, using a hosted fax service has become a valuable option for the healthcare industry.

Our FoIP cloud-based technology gives immediate access to resources without any up-front capital investment. The challenging part is to ensure the flawless and transparent integration of FoIP technology with emerging information technology systems and processes. To address this concern, XMedius has designed connectors that enable the seamless integration of its XMediusFAX® On-Premises and Cloud solutions with a variety of Healthcare Information Systems (HIS). Through the use of an XMedius connector, these systems allow healthcare professionals to share both electronic and paper-based PHI records. For existing paper-based records that need to be digitized, XMediusFAX® supports faxing from Multi-Function Printers through a series of MFP connectors. For electronic records, many organizations set up faxing directly from their EMR/EHR, eliminating the need to print records while still maintaining a complete audit trail of sent information.

The XMediusFAX® solution is simple to set up with the EMR/EHR systems of NextGen, a premier software and services provider for medical and dental group practices, and Allscripts, a leader in healthcare information technology solutions that advance clinical results. XMediusFAX® can be easily configured to securely route received faxes containing PHI to specific departments/individuals in digital form. These integrations deliver the flexibility to securely share PHI to provide the highest level of patient care.

What recommendations would you make to any company interested in participating in the Cloud and FOIP industry, especially for healthcare?

Finding the right business partner that will help you meet your organization’s strategic objectives is key. There are numerous FoIP solutions out there, but you need to ensure that the one you choose provides excellent support, allows you to minimize your costs, helps you address healthcare compliance regulations, and is as user-friendly as possible. The solution should also extend existing platforms and applications to eliminate the risk of errors as well as inefficient and time-consuming manual processes.

Contact each of the selected vendors and ask for customer references. Direct and genuine feedback gives a real picture of the pros and cons of a solution. You should also ask for product demonstrations and trials. This will give you a concrete, hands-on appreciation of the solution’s features and capabilities.

Also, ensure that any company you select has a solid track record and a responsive, accessible customer service department. Addressing these issues will maximize both the short and long-term benefits of your purchase.