Secure Courier alternatives

[Mike Strout]

At our organization we have a reference lab business where we sell our lab services to regional clinics. Currently, we use a company to sit in the middle between us and them, providing site-specific translation and message relay services. As of late we have found their implementations to be slow and expensive and their support underwhelming, so we are exploring bringing this work in house. The translation work is easy but exchanging messages through them, not so much. Right now we have two options…

1. MLLP over VPN: It would fine, but it is always a challenge to get the client’s side configured correctly.

2. Secure Courier: While we love Cloverleaf and the idea of Secure Courier, it is so prohibitively expensive, there is no way we can justify it.

It doesn’t seem like it should be that hard, but I can’t find any solution that can relay MLLP over HTTPS or SFTP. I am wondering if there are any other solutions people are using to exchange messages in a scenario like ours.

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Just my .02:

ANY Clearing House solution you go with in my opinion will be more expensive and more troublesome in the long run. I suspect the one you are using is not unique in that regard.

Has a cost/benefit analysis been done among the three options (use CH, roll your own VPN, acquire Secure Courier) been done or is there just a reaction to sticker shock and observed painfullness of the various solutions?

I would not base my decision on immediate cost alone but rather the more insiidious and significant long term cost including maintenance cost and cost of daily service assurance.

I have no idea of the costs involved but unlless a sober total cost evaluation is performed I don’t know how I could decide were I asked to.

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

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