New E-mail Service Assures Confidential and Secure Online Medical Communication - CertifiedMail.com - Company Business and Marketing

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Nov 8, 1999

Coming off the heels of last week's proposed federal regulations to increase security for electronic patient records, CertifiedMail.com announced that it has launched a new secure e-mail service designed to protect secure online communications between patients, physicians, HMOs and insurance companies.

The new, free e-mail service, also called CertifiedMail.com, offers patients and the medical community unprecedented security and assures that medical related e-mail is not hacked, intercepted or otherwise compromised during online transmission.

At the same time, the service overcomes the nagging concern that plagues e-mail medical communications: the uncertainty of whether an important medical e-mail was received by the patient or healthcare provider.

CertifiedMail.com provides the patient and the physician reliable confirmation that the e-mail was received, right down to the digital fingerprint of the computer, time and date the e-mail was accessed.

"CertifiedMail.com for the Medical Community overcomes the limitations of e-mail while offering a new level of security that the patient's e-mail was opened by the physician," says Mahesh Muchhala, President and CEO of CertifiedMial.com. It provides a powerful new tool for physicians and other healthcare practitioners for online communications with complete security.

According to C. Everett Koop, MD, online medicine is quickly becoming the norm in the medical community. Its inherent low-cost and speed provides the next logical step for patients and physicians to communicate clearly and effectively.

"The concern is that prescriptions, diagnosis and medical records sent by e-mail are not secure," says Muchhala. CertifiedMail.com takes the uncertainty out of electronic transactions and provides a reliable avenue of communications for the entire medical community.

Consumers can open their own free CertifiedMail.com account by logging on to www.certifiedmail.com. The service is also available to healthcare professionals for as little as $99 per year.

How CertifiedMail.com Works

Key to CertifiedMail.com's ability to send secure, reliable e-mail is the patent-pending process behind the service. After users create a personal account on the site, they use their Web browser to compose an e-mail and add attachments before hitting send.

The e-mail is then saved to a secure server, either one maintained by CertifiedMail.com or a company's own server running CertifiedMail.com's soon-to-be-available licensed software.

The server then creates a receive-only account for the recipient and sends a fully encrypted e-mail message with a Web address, user ID, and password, with directions for picking up the message at CertifiedMail.com's site. When the correspondent picks up the waiting mail, the server logs the time it was retrieved.

The actual text of the message does not end up on the user's computer. The sender is e-mailed an encrypted receipt noting the time and date the message was opened. The receiver can read, reply, forward and copy others on the e-mail, just like in traditional, unsecured e-mail software packages.

The main difference is that CertifiedMail.com automatically generates a new account for every recipient, thereby, closing the security loop throughout the e-mail chain. For more information about CertifiedMail.com, contact Peter Winicov at Gregory Communications, Inc. (610) 642-8253.