Print
Email
Print Edition StoriesFriday, March 26, 2010
Tighter health data regs benefit some Boston-area health IT firms
By Julie M. Donnelly
MHT's Julie Donnelly: Biotechs lag in social media use
MHT's Jackie Noblett: Maine becoming a hub for pet-oriented biotechs
MHT's Julie Donnelly: Pharmaceuticals find drug development partners in colleges
Imprivata Inc. will launch a new product next week using face-recognition software to help doctors protect personal health information.
The software automatically logs out if a doctor walks away from the computer, perhaps to attend to an emergency, saving the doctor the step of logging out. Upon returning to the station, a camera surveys biometric information and, if it checks out, saves time by logging the doctor back in automatically.
“As more institutions move to electronic medical records, it‘s increasingly important to implement adequate controls on who accesses them,” said CEO Omar Hussain.
Lexington-based Imprivata is just one example of a local company benefiting from stricter regulations of health data security implemented at the start of the year, such as the Massachusetts Data Privacy Act, which specifies how data must be protected on laptops and other portable devices.
Privately held Imprivata has raised $50 million since 2002 from investors including locally based Polaris Ventures, Highland Capital Partners and General Catalyst, and Germany-based SAP Ventures. Company officials would not reveal revenue figures, but said the company became profitable in 2009 and added 10 employees in the past two months, for a head count of 110 workers.
Two other companies — Chelmsford-based Biscom and Application Security Inc., which is based in Bedford and New York — have responded to changes in existing HIPAA regulations, which were part of the federal stimulus program’s so-called HITECH act. The changes were enacted in February 2009 and took effect last month.
Biscom, a private company with about 100 employees, specializes in turning the papers lying around FAX machines into more private digital documents.
“Much of the new business we are getting now is from law firms,” said Bill Ho, Biscom’s vice president of Internet products. Ho says this is due to a key provision in the expanded HIPAA regulations that mean not just hospitals, but business associates like law firms and billing companies that handle sensitive patient information, are covered by the law.
Touting customers such as General Electric Healthcare and Siemens AG, Biscom will be adding a few new positions next week to keep up with demand. Ho would not disclose the company’s revenue, but said that the health care part of the business grew 15 percent in the past quarter.
Josh Shaul, vice president of product management at Application Security Inc., said it’s not just HIPAA that’s driving new business. Recently tightened privacy standards at the U.S. Department of Defense are also contributing to the scramble to protect health data. “Those standards have been tightened three or four times, in just the past nine months,” Shaul said.
The DOD contracts out health care for soldiers and other personnel to private insurers all over the country, and if those insurers don’t meet the DOD’s standards, those contracts can be terminated. At least 40 private insurers now use the company’s database security products, and Application Security has recently added eight employees, bringing total head count to about 100.
Shaul did not disclose the company’s revenue, but he said the database security products have seen a 35 percent year over year increase in 2009 from 2008.
Comments
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.
RSS Feeds
