MaxMD

MaxMD provides Direct secure messaging as a health information service provider, offering hosted Direct domains, the mdEmail service and the domain and certificate services that underpin secure healthcare communication.

Operating as a HISP is the specific role, and it is infrastructure rather than an application. Direct secure messaging works like email but with mandatory encryption and verified identity for every participant, and a health information service provider is the entity that issues those identities, holds the certificates and routes the messages. A practice does not buy a HISP the way it buys software, it obtains an address from one.

Digital certificates are what make the trust model function. Every Direct address is backed by a certificate proving the holder is a verified healthcare entity, which is why a message can be trusted to have come from the practice it claims, and why identity verification rather than message delivery is the substantive work.

Domain services allow an organisation to run Direct addresses on its own domain rather than a provider's, which matters for a hospital or health system whose correspondents expect to see its name in the address they are sending to, and who would find a generic provider domain unrecognisable.