TigerText gives doctors a safe way to text in the hospital with $21M

Texting can seem so innocent, but when it comes to the doctor’s office, it’s not.

TigerText get $21 million today to secure the fast and effective form of communication that often goes unquestioned in both health care and enterprise institutions.

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One of the “bring your own device” era’s main issues is that it’s often hard for employees to even know where they’re overstepping boundaries. Text messaging is a great example of this. Texting a few bullet points on the meeting about a patient’s new medications might feel as innocent as messaging your spouse a few more items for the grocery list.

But if your phone gets stolen, lost, or compromised, no one’s going to care that you’re out of milk. They might care if you’re handling a particularly interesting patient.

TigerText’s messaging app is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) compliant, meaning that you can use it within health care establishments like hospitals. You can use it on your phone or computer, and it encrypts all messages. Beyond that, the app immediately shows you when a message has been read, enables you to recall the message and set a “lifespan” for it (think self-destructing messages), and can send attachments.

You can also organize your contact lists into groups, which helps if you have a particular team you’d like to reach out to at one time, and is compatible with Active Directory.

This kind of functionality is hugely important for an environment like a hospital, where information needs to be sent around quickly — especially for nurses who may need to hear back from doctors before they can perform certain treatments.

Other apps are HIPAA compliant and provide a high-level of encryption — things like Wickr and Silent Circle, which have otherwise been marketed as consumer products, particularly in Wickr’s case. The company wants to overcome Snapchat and be recognized as the most secure messaging app for anyone to use.

This is TigerText’s second round of funding. Shasta Ventures led the round with participation from OrbiMEd, Reed Elsevier Ventures, Telus Corporation, East Capital, New Leaf Venture Partners, and New Science Ventures. TigerText is headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif and was founded in 2010.