DigiCert, a high-assurance digital certificate provider, and DataMotion, a health information service provider (HISP) with 14 years of experience in secure data delivery services, have partnered to expand common dual-mode certification for commercial and federal use for the healthcare industry. The partnership plans to improve patient care by making it much simpler for federal and non-federal organizations to engage in the secure electronic exchange of healthcare information.

The DigiCert/DataMotion partnership is a step forward in fulfilling the vision of DirectTrust, an independent nonprofit trade association tasked with overcoming secure data transfer challenges related to the Direct Project. The Direct Project is a federal healthcare initiative fostering a standard method to securely exchange electronic healthcare information. It aims to ensure compliance with federal privacy requirements and improve patient outcomes.

The partnership makes DataMotion the first HISP to use DigiCert's dual-mode Direct Med Certificate Authority (Direct Med CA) in the DirectTrust Transitional Trust Anchor Bundle. The Bundle is a collection of trust anchor certificates from HISPs that meet common policies and practices for transmitting healthcare data across geographies and technologies. It eliminates the need for HISPs to manually exchange trust anchors, avoiding legal hurdles and one-off contracts. Direct secure messaging leverages the internet and is more secure than fax-based communication.

Participating HISPs can quickly help healthcare organizations, providers and patients to communicate in a way that is Direct-compliant and with an expanding community of trusted partners.

"The DigiCert Direct Med CA leverages policy processing capabilities to make the Direct protocol much more efficient to implement. This breakthrough eases certification difficulties that have threatened to stall adoption of the Direct Project," said DigiCert's vice president of government/education relations and Scott Rea, senior PKI architect, also a member of the board of directors for DirectTrust. "Because our Direct Med CA facilitates commercial and federal use for multiple trust assurance levels, more providers will now be able to quickly and safely exchange information more efficiently."

DigiCert was first to issue Direct-compliant Federal Bridge Certification Authority certificates for federal agencies to interoperate with non-federal organizations. The Direct Med CA can now serve all of healthcare with basic and medium assurance levels. DataMotion is now able to offer a turnkey solution that will enable electronic health record (EHR) vendors and their customers to easily meet real-world healthcare communications needs.