IBM, American Well Team to Enhance Security for Online Health Data

IBM (Armonk, N.Y.) and American Well Inc. (Boston, Mass.) announced an expanded partnership to further embed security into American Well's Online Care system in an effort to further safeguard patient information that is collected and exchanged as part of live Online Care consultations with healthcare providers. This announcement builds on American Well's selection of IBM to perform security auditing services for the past two years.

American Well partners with major health plans, delivery networks and pharmacy chains to enable Online Care services that allow patients to connect live and on-demand with primary care and specialty physicians, as well as other clinicians, whenever they have a health need, from their homes or workplaces. Using this growing type of telehealth consultation, Online Care, patients no longer have to travel great distances to get proper medical attention, which also eases scheduling challenges for healthcare providers. For example, a patient can use the service to check in with their doctor for issues like reviewing lab results or meet with a doctor online, right away, if they have a bad sinus infection, even if the doctor is booked for several weeks.

As part of the expanded partnership, IBM will help American Well further integrate its professional security services and skills into their application development process to create even more secure applications for the company's telehealth system from the start. IBM helps American Well to develop more secure, customized versions of its Online Care application for each client.