The U.S. Army has given a five-year contract to Diversinet, the mobile-healthcare communications company, to support expansion of the Army’s mCare telehealth outreach program for members of the military recovering from mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and other wounds.
Providing development, maintenance and consulting services, Diversinet will help the Army hasten the recovery and track the progress of as many as 10,000 "wounded warriors" who return home or to community-based transition units following initial recuperation in military medical facilities.
The mCare program features a downloadable, HIPAA-compliant mobile application that enables daily two-way secure communication between patients and the Army’s healthcare team. The application lets users store all of their essential healthcare information on their mobile phones, and securely send and receive healthcare-related messages.
These secure messages, transmitted via Diversinet's MobiSecure Health platform, assist in the scheduling of medical appointments, as well as providing follow-up appointment reminders, health and wellness tips, recovery goals, and general announcements – all distributed from a secure central website.
Patients’ reply messages enable care teams to monitor and track body weight, mood, energy, sleep patterns, physical pain, relationships, anger management and overall sense of well-being.
“The mobile healthcare communications solution that the U.S. Army has engaged us to provide is critically important to our wounded returning soldiers,” said Mark Trigsted, Diversinet’s executive vice president of healthcare, “so this new contract directly with the Army is a clear validation of our MobiSecure Health platform.”
mCare participants currently are using more than 270 different mobile device brands and models that are all compatible with MobiSecure, demonstrating the depth and breadth of Diversinet’s carrier and device coverage.
“MobiSecure’s ability to support secure messaging, as well as work on a wide variety of consumer handsets and smart phones and any operator’s wireless network, were big differentiators for addressing the Army’s needs,” said Trigsted.
Under the contract, Diversinet will ramp up mobile health communications services using:
- MobiSecure Wallet and Vault. This downloadable mobile application facilitates ultra-secure two-way communication, enabling critical personal information to be stored and accessed on mobile devices anytime, anywhere.
- MobiSecure SMS. This product, which the Army is the first to license, will be added to mCare to enable the mCare team to exchange sensitive information instantly with wounded warriors. It will support secure two-way text-based messaging on mobile devices for soldiers with limited cell-phone resources and/or no data plans.
“Helping the U.S. Army expand mCare from an extensive pilot to a formal program with a five-year contract is very rewarding, as it demonstrates our leadership in securing mobile healthcare applications under some of the toughest guidelines in the industry,” said Albert Wahbe, Diversinet’s chairman and CEO.
