Healthmail: Celebrating a decade of Secure, Efficient, and Evolving Healthcare Communications
Healthmail is the HSE’s secure clinical email service designed to facilitate safe and confidential communication between healthcare professionals. Needless to say, secure email is crucial in the healthcare sector, where the privacy and security of patient information is paramount.
Healthmail celebrates its 10th birthday this year, having come into operation as a very simple proof-of-concept in November 2014. Healthlink was already well established as the national messaging broker for structured data, so Healthmail’s remit was to facilitate exchange of unstructured data between GPs, hospitals and HSE staff nationally.
The service grew slowly in its early years, adding community pharmacies in 2017, nursing homes and optometrists in 2018, dentists in 2020, physiotherapists and private consultants in 2021 and dietitians in 2023. The real growth in terms of usage began in 2020 when COVID emergency legislative provisions recognised Healthmail as the ‘national electronic prescription transfer service’, permitting the sending of a script electronically without the need for a signed paper equivalent.
This led to phenomenal demand for accounts and huge increases in message throughput, putting pressure on the aging infrastructure which at the time was hosted in the Mater Hospital data centre. So, to ensure the system could operate at peak capacity, we began a cloud migration project which was successfully complete in just under 6 months in January 2021.
Key Features of Healthmail
Security:
As a critical national service, the highest levels of security are required. Healthmail has enabled geo-fencing to Ireland/UK, 90-day password resets and 90-day inactive account suspensions. We are halfway through the MFA rollout with 52% of accounts complete to date. Last year we implemented the Barracuda Security Operations Centre (SOC) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR) platform. We have a consistent monthly Cyber Rating of A (though the aim is to get to A+).
Bounded Network:
By default, all domains are blocked from communicating with Healthmail but there is a growing list of whitelisted agencies, including all public and private hospitals, section 38/39 agencies and so on. Transport layer security (TLS) connections are in place with all allowed domains.
Compliance:
Healthmail is designed to comply with various data protection regulations, such as GDPR. This compliance is crucial for healthcare providers who need to ensure that they are handling patient data in a lawful manner.
Ease of Use:
Despite its advanced security features, Healthmail is user-friendly. GPs can use it to send mail from within their practice management applications while other users access through outlook.com.
Benefits of Using Healthmail
Enhanced Patient Care:
Healthmail allows for quick and easy communication between healthcare providers. It improves communication processes, speeding up exchange of clinical information which can lead to quicker decision making and treatment.
Reduced Risk of Data Breaches:
Public email services are not secure enough for the transmission of sensitive patient information. Healthmail reduces the risk of data breaches by providing a secure platform for communication.
Improved Efficiency:
Healthmail streamlines administrative tasks by reducing the need for paperwork and phone calls. This can save both time and money.
While Healthmail offers many benefits, there are also challenges in providing this service, the biggest being cyber security threats. Healthmail is continually targeted, making our SOC and XDR capabilities so important, together with the support we receive from our own CISO team.
Some Stats
At time of writing, we have a total of 9,214 Healthmail accounts. The average number of emails sent per month is around 2.2 million and received is 2.5 million. Of those received, approximately 1.9 million are prescriptions sent to pharmacies for dispensing.
For more information about Healthmail, view their webpage here.