[Zak]

> Doctors often don’t have reliable access to email.

Why? It would be very unusual for a doctor in a wealthy country not to have a smartphone with service, or the ability to get one.

[Spooky23]

If you’re in a hospital, a doctor has privileges there, but is often not an employee.

You also have the scenario of unaffiliated doctors... your GP doesn’t work with your urologist, and they do not have a secure way to communicate.

It is possible to use things like Zix or other “secure” email solutions, but all are painful and all will vary from organization to organization.

[epochwolf]

HIPAA requires any email with patient data be encrypted. That kills any attempt to receive email on a smart phone.

[Zak]

[Repeat rant about people not adopting PGP when we've had it for 27 years]

Nothing about a smartphone prevents email from being encrypted. The fact that nobody's sending encrypted email does, but that's a user adoption problem rather than a technical problem. The technical problem is solved, solved well, and has been solved for decades.

[Spooky23]

Encryption is easy. Key management is not. PGP is a lousy solution. Too difficult to use and sacrifices too much functionality.

The world needs something like iMessage but more open.

[Zak]

Key management is moderately difficult, and more of a UX problem than a technical one. A UX very much like that of iMessage could be built on top of PGP and keyservers.

We've had the ability to do this for a long time, but only a few major players are in a position to ensure sufficient user adoption, and they're not interested in creating anything that doesn't drive users to their walled gardens.

[dqv]

The bigger problem is that neither Apple nor Google have implemented device-local PGP encryption in their default email clients. Apple is one-step ahead and actually has had s/mime support for a while, but it really needs wide support on Android phones as well to become ubiquitous. It would set an implied standard for all other email apps on iOS and Android.