The healthcare industry, like many other industries, has welcomed the shift to a digital world. However, it’s faced with its own set of unique challenges that other industries don’t always encounter — a strict set of privacy and compliance regulations for patient information.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is the primary consideration for digital marketers navigating the healthcare sector. To comply, organizations are rethinking their approach to marketing campaigns and their websites. Here, AMNY Health Marketing details how customer data platforms may be the solution.

What Is a Customer Data Platform?

A customer data platform is customer data management software that combines data from multiple tools to create a centralized database. The database can ingest, integrate, manage, and deliver customer data to other technology solutions to create more personalized marketing campaigns.

A customer data platform works by collecting and integrating all forms of customer data. The software will collect consumer behavior, demographic information, and transactional data to track and analyze customer interactions. This helps create a unified customer profile. The single customer view is used to match marketing efforts for greater effectiveness.

Customer data platforms give marketers and organizations the ability to centrally manage data while staying in compliance with data privacy regulations. For example, customer data platforms have obtained HIPAA compliance and protect patient data in a safe, secure, and effective way.

Understanding HIPPA

HIPPA is the national standard for the security and privacy of protected health information (PHI). Healthcare providers and insurers that store, transmit, or use PHI are expected to comply with HIPPA guidelines. The purpose of these guidelines is to provide the best practices and requirements for the handling, processing, sharing, and security of PHI to protect patients’ rights.

Under HIPPA, patients have control over their PHI. Patients have the right to access, request changes, and receive their health information. Anyone found violating HIPPA regulations will receive significant penalties and fines, including civil and criminal penalties.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has recently taken another look at HIPPA regulations and released new guidance in November 2022. The changes redefine how digital analytics and products are interpreted in terms of PHI.

The revised HIPPA tracking guidance made two important changes:

• IP addresses now meet the criteria for defining a unique individual
• Casually searching healthcare topics or for available physicians are classified as PHI

The Role of Customer Data Platforms

This reinterpretation forces organizations to reestablish their analytics and personalization programs. At the same time, it provides a unique opportunity for organizations to arrive at a better place than they were before.

Organizations need a solution to remove IP addresses before passing them to analytics. Customer data platforms provide this solution. Many major platforms are willing to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) that would promise to secure the PHI, making it a viable solution.

Customer data platforms aren’t a new phenomenon in the world of consumer healthcare. Previous attempts to take advantage of the identity resolution, auto-segmentation, and personalization features of these systems have been unsuccessful. Many institutions have found it difficult to take on the added expense and staffing needed.

However, in light of recent changes, customer data platforms are reemerging as a practical option to reframe analytics and personalization programs within a HIPAA-controlled environment. Additionally, customer data platforms help organizations address many other concerns, such as unifying user records, streamlining, targeting, and personalizing.

Learn More at AMNY Health Marketing

HIPPA creates unique challenges for healthcare marketers and providers. Marketing strategies must take patient’s right to privacy into consideration. At AMNY Health Marketing, our marketing methods are grounded in extensive and reliable healthcare market data. This data allows us to successfully create engaging content. To learn more about AMNY Health Marketing and the services we provide, contact us today.