A New Study Found That Hospitals Almost Always Share Visitor Info With Big Tech
Your healthcare data might not be as private as you think.
Giphy
You’re probably aware of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which, among other things, aims to protect personal patient data from being shared irresponsibly. But you might not know how much information is not covered by the law.
According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, there’s one bit of information that is not only permitted to be shared, but almost every hospital is actively distributing it to tech giants like Google and Meta as well as various other third-party data brokers.
Who’s receiving what?
The new report considered evidence collected from 100 hospitals across the United States and compiled a stark overview of the way almost all of them handle details about individuals who use their respective websites.
- 96% shared this data with third-party companies and organizations.
- Nearly 30% didn’t even provide a privacy policy outline on their websites
- Just 56% of those with a policy disclosed the companies receiving data
Dr. Ari Friedman, one of the paper’s authors, described the findings as “shocking and really kind of incomprehensible.”
The illusion of privacy
Not only do humans naturally want to keep their health information secure, but most of us assume that what happens between us and healthcare providers is private. As Friedman and the rest of the team behind this research found, those assumptions are a myth — at least as they relate to certain types of data.
“Even if it’s information that you would have shared with people, there’s still a loss, just an intrinsic loss, when you don’t even have control over who you share that information with,” he said.
And this isn’t a fluke. The same team of researchers studied a much larger sample of hospitals — 3,747 — last year and found that a staggering 98.6% of them tracked and shared website visitor data.
Why Is The Aging Voyager 1 Probe Sending Back Incoherent Communications?
It's been speaking gibberish for a few months and officials are concerned.
One Woman’s Massive Donation Is Wiping Out Tuition At This Medical School
Her inheritance came with the instruction to do "whatever you think is right."
Woman’s Pets Will Inherit Her Multimillion-Dollar Fortune, Not Her Kids
It's not the first time four-legged heirs were named in a will.