The Digital Doc: Exploring Health Tech Innovation

As healthcare capabilities expand, more non-traditional organizations are entering the space. Of course, everyone has heard of HIPAA (hopefully) and has plans in place to protect the private information of patients. However, the world wide web components have created problems for start-ups founded by tech leaders as well as hospitals. Third-party trackers are sharing patient information. Even though some companies are “rebranding“ patients as users and customers, at the end of the day, they are patients and their information needs to be protected.

Per the article referenced in this blog, “In a more recent study,

published in Health Affairs, researchers analyzed 3,700 hospital homepages and found that almost every hospital's homepage is sending visitors' data to third parties.“ This is quite concerning. While some telehealth companies have been fined, they need to place more security measures in place to protect patients. The Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Human Rights have put out a rare joint statement calling out the risks of information sharing. It will be interesting to see what security protections health organizations will need to place in order to remain compliant as they protect patient’s information.