10 Best HIPAA Compliant Messaging Apps [2024]

Krishi Shivasangaran Published On November 18th, 2024 Tech Talks

Virtual consultations are on the rise, especially, post the pandemic, and the convenience to reach a physician at the patient’s comfort. However, with this positive note comes the necessity to secure healthcare communications, keep patient’s PHI (Protected Health Information) secure, establish seamless communication in the HIPAA compliant way, and many more.

Therefore, after a detailed analysis of different factors and parameters, we’ve come up with the top list of HIPAA Chat API providers in this blog that would ease one’s difficulty to streamline vital data and maintain electronically protected health information(ePHI).

What is a HIPAA Compliant Chat App?

A HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) Compliant texting app is an application that allows doctors, medical staff, nurses to share the patient’s protected information. In such a scenario, these apps must by default comply with the HIPAA policies. 

Any entity(authorized user) who uses the HIPAA compliant messaging platform solutions must practice the HIPAA policies. Therefore, the Telehealth app development should have an expert team to handle the policy implementation. 

Presently, with the pandemic hitting hard on us, many people prefer to use healthcare apps to reach a doctor for consultation through instant texting.  Hence, having a HIPAA Compliant texting app is a must for all healthcare providers.

How Does HIPAA Compliant Texting App Assist Healthcare Organizations?

Modern-day healthcare organizations are moving towards HIPAA compliant messaging apps for improved communication and collaboration.

Below is the list of the top three advantages a Healthcare Company can gain by using HIPAA compliant texting apps. 

1. Penalty-Free

The significance of HIPAA text messaging is more after the U.S legislation increased the privacy and security protection for individual’s health in 2013. At the same time, the legislation increases the penalty charges for breaches and non-compliance. As a result, healthcare organizations can attract a maximum penalty of up to $1.5 million per single violation.

2. Improves Productivity

The next advantage any healthcare institution will gain with HIPAA secure apps is productivity improvement. For instance, using hipaa compliant fax apps, healthcare organizations can instantly send patients’ medical reports and prescriptions along with their other tasks. Thus, leading to an increase in productivity.

3. Better Service 

HIPAA in telehealth apps have been known to offer better services, primarily, because it helps patients to connect with doctors at their comfort. And, secondly, doctors can discuss with their peers and provide treatment to patients at the best time. Finally, prescriptions and other files can be shared online. 

4. Cost-Effective

By using apps, both the healthcare service provider and the patients save more money. Firstly, clinics reduce the investments in printing reports, printers, and fax machines. Secondly, using the HIPAA text messaging apps, they create easy communication channels for staff and the patients. Moreover, patients prefer online consultation as it reduces travel time and saves the travel cost for them.

Salient Features of HIPAA Compliant Instant Messaging App

A Healthcare app must be capable of providing and fulfilling the user requirement with the help of the following features.

Features to Include in HIPAA Compliant Apps For Patients

Salient Feature	Need for the Feature	Explanation
Text Messaging	Connect with doctors and medical staff in real-time	Patients can virtually connect with doctors through text messages and discuss their diagnosis and treatments.
Online Appointments	Easy to book an online consultation	The app must display the available slots for patients to book their online appointments with the physicians they prefer.
Instant Chats	For connecting over voice and video calls for better diagnosis.	Patients can engage in voice and video chats with doctors to discuss their health status and treatment measures.
Alert Notifications	Receive alerts and notifications on the diagnosis status and appointments.	Patients must get alert messages and share regular updates on the appointments. Moreover, special precautionary and next consultation information alerts must reach patients.

Features to Include in Secured HIPAA Compliant Apps For Doctors

Salient Feature	Need for the Feature	Explanation
Data Sharing with Care	Doctors and medical staffs exchange and share multiple PHIs of patient	Doctors and staff transfer protected health information using secure messaging healthcare apps. Any medical entity associated with handling ePHI must comply with HIPAA laws.
Store & Retrieve Patient’s Data	Doctors should easily access a patient’s report using the app.	Any chat platform that allows in-app communication must compulsorily have massive storage that would help medical staff to store and retrieve any patient’s data.
Schedule & Send Notifications	Receive and send notifications to their mobiles	This feature helps doctors to know the next patient ready for consultation and this is sent with the aid of alerts and notifications.
Presence Indicator	Indicate if a doctor is available for consulting	Patients would know when the doctor is available with the help of presence indicators set by physicians in the app.

 

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Top 10 APIs & SDKs for HIPAA Compliant Texting Apps in 2025

The Top 10 HIPAA Compliant Texting Apps providers are MirrorFly, SendBird, Twilio, Plivo, Getstream.io, CometChat, PubNub, Enablex, Mesibo, QuickBlox.

1. MirrorFly

MirrorFly is one of the leading HIPAA-compliant chat SDK in the market that allows you to build your chat apps with robust end-to-end encryption. Besides the fact that we provide a platform for seamless interactions between physicians and patients, our video calling APIs powers messaging apps with 1-on-1 and group chats, video chats, voice calling, and other modern communication features. Plus, we also offer both self-hosted and cloud solutions to build in-app communication into apps, as per your requirements. 

Salient Features

MirrorFly Cloud Solution

• Provides Free Chat SDK
• Lets you host your telemedicine app on a dedicated cloud server
• Offers 21-day FREE trial of voice and video call SDKs
• Supports multi-tenancy

MirrorFly Self-hosted Solution

• Provides 100% customizable video, voice and chat SDKs
• You can avail lifetime access to features for a one-time license cost
• Lets you conveniently host your app on-premise 
• Offers white-label solution

UI Effectiveness

• Makes doctor-patient communication easy via video consultation software. 
• Ability to track a patient record globally within the app for diagnosis and instant consultation.

Pricing

MirrorFly offers a Twin model pricing as follows:

MirrorFly Cloud Solution

• Provides 3 different monthly-subscription plans:
  • Easy 
  • Essentials
  • Premium
• For more information on pricing, visit our pricing page

MirrorFly Self-hosted Solution

• Avails 100% customizable video, voice and chat features for a one-time license cost.

2. SendBird 

Using SendBird API & SDK, developing a HIPAA compliant texting service for healthcare is easier. Also, using sendbird, you can create an in-app communication for quick patient access. Additionally, with chatbots, intelligent diagnostic tools, sendbird enables developing a complete communication platform for doctor-patient interaction. Moreover, it possesses a robust, scalable chat API necessary to launch a HIPAA compliant texting app.

Salient Features

• It supports Device Authentication on the client and server sides.
• Offers messaging data and analytics.
• Allows secure texting with encryption for all data and PHI using TLS/SSL. 

UI Effectiveness

• Users get post-care experience notifications, including reminders.
• Facilitates @mentions in the chat, media sharing, lets users receive and read receipts.

Pricing

Starting price is $399/month for 5K chats.

3. Twilio

Twilio makes building a HIPAA compliant email and messaging for the doctor-patient platform faster. Also, it is a highly reliable network that offers a scalable and battle-tested infrastructure, personalized solutions that work on omni channels, and much more for the users. Using Twilio, you can build a platform that supports pre-screening appointments, follow-up and tracks the ongoing treatment.

Salient Features

• It lets you add auto routines and FAQs in the app.
• Sends alert notification and has prescription refill options, automated pre-appointment calls.
• Two Factor authorization for logins.

UI Effectiveness

• Accessible to smart calls with “Click on Call.”
• Messaging from the Smart bots on websites is convenient.

Pricing

A free demo is available. However, Twilio practices a pay-as-you-go pricing.

4. Plivo

Plivo is a messaging API platform where you can go ahead with a web or healthcare mobile app development for secure texting. Also, it is an alternative to HIPAA and texting solutions like Twilio that uses a customized sender ID for outbound messages. Moreover, Plivo offers rich messaging features such as long message concatenation, message queuing, and delivery reports.

Salient Features

• Two-factor authentication for user login.
• Has intelligent message encoding
• Provides reusable templates, sticky sender and detailed debug log reports

UI Effectiveness

• Facilitates automatic Opt-outs
• Send and receive media, including photos, videos, and audio clips.

Pricing

In addition to being a HIPAA secure provider, they also comply with GDPR. Plivo pricing starts at $0.0000/message for outbound messages and extends up to $0.0045/message using shortcodes. 

5. Getstream

Getstream.io allows you to build a HIPAA Compliant Chat app for healthcare more efficiently with their exquisite suite of APIs and SDKs. Additionally, an app will benefit from modern texting tools such as reactions & thread follow-ups, and high-quality video calls.

Salient Features

• It provides two-factor user authentication.
• Tracking of follow-up treatments with personalized notifications.
• Easy deployment with 99.999% uptime SLA guarantee.

UI Effectiveness

• Chatbots to optimize the patient’s chats 
• Dashboard with healthcare history and diagnosis details.

Pricing

Available at a startup plan at $499/mo, while their enterprise plan is custom pricing.

6. CometChat

CometChat is a real-time messaging platform that brings about HIPAA regulations and compliance with video conferencing, messaging and audio systems with utmost security. Its entire setup has been designed to have an easy installation into any 3rd party device like iOS, Android and web app. Plus, their messaging SDKs are compatible enough to run on any platform without the usage of extra codes, and meant for all kinds of industries including healthcare.

Salient Features

• Enables access only to the authorized users who have PHI data, other can never disabled or altered PHI data
• Provides end-to-end encryption across patient entire medical record
• Supports quick integration for medical app development

UI Effectiveness

• Easily notifies ‘N’ number of patients at once
• Provides easy and secure access to media and file sharing instantly

Pricing

A free demo is available along with a pay-as-you-go pricing option.

7. PubNub

PubNub provides in-app chat APIs with HIPAA Compliant chat, voice and video features that deliver better patient experience to all the remote sectors using its numerous features in real-time. Their APIs ensure high-end patient satisfaction with rich at-home treatment using regular notification, location trackers, etc. Its HIPAA-compliant design improves overall operational efficiency with speed consultations reducing no-shows and overhead cost of the treatment.

Salient Features

• Improve efficiency with no compromise in patient care
• Provides high-end security over patients health care information
• Ensures secure sharing of confidential data

UI Effectiveness

• Highly flexible to fit with exact need of any use cases
• More of backend support for chat with lower level of services

Pricing

PubNub provides its service as a pay-as-you-go pricing model along with a free trial to its users.

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8. EnableX

Enablex provides a HIPAA-compliant chat platform that meets the technical and business needs of every healthcare industry. It ensures privacy over patient’s sensitive data against all kinds of theft. With these, their video calling APIs have been designed to support the risk and liability management across the chain, and aid wellness programs too, where the patient can have access to certified personal trainers for fitness or nutrition through live video chat app.

Salient Features

• Reduces stress for mental health patients by allowing therapy across any device 
• Enables to record all conversations for risk and liability management
• Facilitated with IoT tracking device to monitor patient health and welfare

UI Effectiveness

• Detect the signs of abnormalities in speech pattern with AI-powered video conversation
• Get connected within seconds for virtual assistance

Pricing

Enablex has a free trial and provides its service as a pay-as-you-go pricing method.

9. Mesibo

Mesibo allows you to quickly build your HIPAA Compliant Chat app with their easy to integrate real-time voice and video chat app features. Apart from the basic functionalities like location sharing, push notifications, scheduling appointments, their platform offers more in-depth features to make the doctor-patient communication more personalized and cost efficient. Plus, Mesibo’s messaging SDKs have been designed to minimize the complexities of any connection using easy-to-use UI and scalable platform.

Salient Features

• Face-to-face doctor-patient interaction across the world
• Secure and reliable platform
• Regular follow-up with patients using notifications

UI Effectiveness

• HIPAA compliant platform is highly adaptable to receive video notification when you are on another call
• The patients data is accessible only by the patient and the authorized hospital staff only

Pricing

Mesibo offers a free trial to its users and bills at a pay-as-you-go pricing model.

10. QuickBlox

QuickBlox with its HIPAA compliant texting, voice, and video calling capabilities have empowered the healthcare industries around the world. Its secure texting APIs are highly powerful to build any HIPAA compliant mobile app or video conferencing app that enhances remote health monitoring, internal communication, patient management, etc. Additionally, they also come with a variety of HIPAA compliant hosting solutions that ensure private communication and patient data to be stored in our cloud or your cloud, for complete control. And, their chat SDKs can be configured into any infrastructure according to the industry needs to get the best patient health management.

Salient Features

• Uninterrupted doctor-patient communication for ongoing care
• HIPAA chat user management with patients medical records
• HIPAA compliant instant chat with live and offline messages and alerts

UI Effectiveness

• Easy to access and assemble desired interface
• Highly customizable with color, font, icons, etc

Pricing

QuickBlox provides its service as a pay-as-you-go pricing and offers a free trial to their users.

Get Future-Ready with HIPAA Compliant Chat Apps – The Conclusion

Maintaining HIPAA Compliance texting is significant in Healthcare apps. While many solutions allow you to build secure texting apps, only a few enable customization. If you are looking to develop a hipaa compliant texting app for doctors and patients without any hassles, you can choose from best-in-class API solution providers like MirrorFly. However, healthcare organizations must administrate the protection of protected health information at all times.