Tag: HIMMS’18

Sezame visiting HIMMS’18

In March 2018 we visited HIMMS in Las Vegas. HIMMS is the largest IT for Health exhibition worldwide and means Health Information Management Systems Society. Why did we visit HIMMS as our first visit to a healthcare exhibition? To put it bluntly the reason was that within the European healthcare sector the policies and decisions for healthcare are mostly done by the government which don’t take into account startups and thus it’s difficult in Europe to enter this domain easily. Next to that we think our solution is very well capable of supporting the healthcare sector since we are compliant to the European GPDR and eIDAS standards and our solution is simple and secure to use. Only in the US, Americans spend annually 3.4 trillion dollars on health (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/06/how-we-spend-3400000000000/530355/) which gives a picture how big this market is for IT.

What did we see at HIMMS, what were the largest takeaways?

1. Healthcare is now primed for a digital transformation. Thanks to the $35 billion invested in putting electronic healthcare records in every hospital and doctor’s office, most healthcare providers are now computerized. With the EHR basics in place much more money will be spent in coming years. Also, Jared Kushner explained at HIMMS that The White House is fully focused on achieving interoperability of healthcare records;
2. Enterprises are recognizing the safety, efficiency, and storage capacity of the cloud. From Amazon’s AWS to IBM’s Watson, virtually all 1300 vendors exhibiting at the show were promoting their cloud solutions;
3. Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Analytics, and Augmented Reality aren’t just coming: they are already here;
4. Apple, Amazon and Uber entering the healthcare field captured everyone’s attention with the hope of a new casino game that is a guaranteed winner. Each of them represents an area — group purchasing via Amazon, employee clinics by Apple and transportation via Uber — that is currently covered in some form or fashion. It’s not that these companies will turn the sector around instantly, but it did create a buzz which the old-fashioned companies need to start innovating.

Especially the first two take-aways are interesting to us. In the US the majority of interactions in the healthcare system is based on 1-factor authentication solutions or even no additional checks (in case of the usage of hospital badges e.g.). We also noticed that biometric authentication was not yet mainstream in healthcare solutions.

Our solution can be used within the healthcare domain on various use cases for e.g. logging into online accounts (with our solution there’s no risk of fraud, since only the account holder can log into the account), logging into a computer (no password needed anymore), logging into subdirectories / files with biometric authentication, validation of a customer on the other end of the phone line via remote biometric validation, unlocking electronic key lockers, or even linking a healthcare badge when walking through e.g. a hospital. As long as a smartphone can be carried along through the healthcare facility and the requester for the authentication is connected our solution works… simple and very secure!

Help us spread the word and free the world of the nuisance that passwords and PINs pose to all our lifes today and let’s make this world safer – especially in the healthcare environment!