HealthPartners Adds Secure Mobile MessagingHealthPartners Adds Secure Mobile Messaging

HealthPartners, a non-profit healthcare organization and health plan, has signed on to use secure mobile two-way messaging technology from Diversinet.

The offering will give HealthPartners health plan members and patients secure, mobile access to their electronic health information and the ability to securely communicate with clinicians.

Initially, HealthPartners will offer programs to help high-risk and chronically ill patients communicate with their care managers via secure, two-way messaging on a range of smartphones and devices that Diversinet's MobiSecure platform supports, including the Apple iPhone, Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Palm devices.

The first HealthPartners users will be women with high-risk pregnancies and patients with chronic diseases who have been recently discharged from hospitals.

Goals include avoiding premature births and reducing hospital readmissions by providing these patients secure access to their medical information and the ability to send and receive "dually encrypted" messages to and from clinicians, said Jay Couse, Diversinet senior VP of business development.

"The two-way secure mobile messaging initiative is an important component of HealthPartners' overall strategy to engage consumers in their healthcare, increasing personalization based on their preferences, and continue to transform the industry to enable health improvement and support affordability of care," said Scott Aebischer, HealthPartners senior VP of customer service and product innovation, in an e-mail to information.

"We are currently evaluating several additional opportunities related to health and wellness and will announce during fourth quarter," Aebischer said.

HealthPartners, based in Bloomington, Minn., operates a health plan, hospital, out-patient clinics, home health services, hospice, and other medical, dental, and pharmacy services in the Twin City region.

The multi-year renewable contract between HealthPartners and Diversinet makes HealthPartners Diversinet's largest customer since Diversinet reached a settlement last month with AllOne Mobile and its parent company, AllOne Health Group, which in 2008 had signed an exclusive agreement to sublicense certain Diversinet software to combine it with AllOne's software in the mobile personal health record market.

AllOne Health Group, a subsidiary of Hospital Service Association of Northeastern Pennsylvania, which does business as Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania, recently decided to refocus its business and "leave the health technology business," Couse said.

Upon the settlement, HSA returned 6,956,152 common shares of Diversinet, at the time representing approximately 14.5% of the issued and outstanding common shares of Diversinet.

"We are pleased with the terms of the settlement," said Albert Wahbe, Diversinet's chairman and CEO in a statement last month.

"This resolution will now allow us to proceed freely to execute our go-to-market strategy," which focuses on providing "feature-rich mobile applications" that securely connect and protect patients with "their healthcare information, providers, and payers – anytime, anywhere," he said.