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Maine Medical Center Protects Confidential eRecords With SecureMail Gateway(TM) By GlobalCerts

Posted on: Tuesday, 13 March 2007, 12:01 CDT

Maine Medical Center, one of the premier care centers in Northern New England, announces the implementation of an email security solution by GlobalCerts -- a secure messaging technology company with offices in Bedford, NH. The GlobalCerts SecureMail Gateway encryption appliance is considered an important part of Maine Medical Center's Health Information Privacy Practices.

While the hospital itself provides inpatient services in all medical specialties, Maine Medical Center is also a growing network of outpatient facilities, laboratories, rehabilitation clinics and preventative care centers that includes a teaching hospital and a research institute. As one of the member organizations that comprise the Maine Health network of healthcare providers, Maine Medical Center prides itself in the quality and breadth of its patient services - largely made possible with innovative technologies.

Last year, Hospitals & Health Network Magazine named Maine Medical Center one of the 100 Most Wired Hospitals, as well as one of the 25 Most Wireless Hospitals in the country.

"Technology plays such a critical role in all aspects of healthcare, including the management of patient information," said Paul Caron, a Network Administrator in the Information Services Division at Maine Medical Center. "Ultimately, you want to keep things as simple as possible for your end users -- but never at the cost of security."

In researching email encryption solutions that would enable the hospital to securely share patient records with external specialists, physicians and medical claims processors, Maine Medical Center established three critical requirements. First, the encryption capability needed to be available to hospital workers from any workstation, not just their desktops. Secondly, the solution needed to be simple for the IT staff to deploy and simple for all hospital workers and external email recipients to use. Finally, it had to be cost justifiable.

After careful evaluation, the team agreed that the GlobalCerts SecureMail Gateway™ (SMG) had met their key requirements. Not only was it a single appliance solution with no desktop footprint, but it completely automated the management and exchange of encryption keys for all internal and external email users.

"The best part is that not only can we send secure email from any desktop, but we can also secure communications from PDAs, which was a huge challenge for us before," explained Caron. "Imagine having to install and manage digital certificates on PDAs, or having to reinstall certificates because a PDA lost its battery life. Today, our desktop and PDA email communication is completely secured by the SMG with practically no IT overhead. Additionally, having the ability to secure an email composed on the Web client of our email system is huge!"

As for challenges, Caron admits to one. "It was almost too simple! We had prepared ourselves for the worst -- thinking that email encryption was going to be too difficult for the end-users and way too hard to manage. Instead, it took off very quickly which helped the hospital and its affiliates maximize the communication efficiency of secure email."

About Maine Medical Center:

Maine Medical Center, the largest hospital in Maine, is the premier referral hospital for Maine and northern New England. Located in Portland, the 606-bed facility is both a teaching hospital and an active research center, providing comprehensive services in all medical specialties. MMC prides itself on offering the latest innovations in technology, delivered by dedicated, compassionate caregivers. That's what makes Maine Medical Center "a health place like no place in Maine". More information about Maine Medical Center is available at www.mmc.org or (877) 339-3107

About GlobalCerts:

GlobalCerts is the premier enterprise secure messaging solution for business, financial institutions, governments, healthcare and other organizations with a need to protect confidential information. GlobalCerts enables enterprises to protect their sensitive information assets through affordable, easy to use, easy to deploy solutions. The GlobalCerts secure email product suite allows companies to protect confidential corporate communications while improving business process. More information about GlobalCerts is available at www.globalcerts.net or 877-30EMAIL or (877-303-6245)

Source: Business Wire

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