Technology is revolutionizing the healthcare industry at all stages of a patient’s journey. However, today we can find the essence of technology in everything, i.e., remote GP appointments or wristbands that count our steps. The 3D printers that are producing human cells and the robots that are carrying out surgery—there is technology everywhere, and health-tech startups are now also using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and wearables to create more personalized and accessible care.
However, at the heart of this technology, there is data, and information is paramount to the evolution of the healthcare industry. This big data requires great responsibility, and therefore privacy and security need to be integral to health-tech innovation. Hence, complying with GDPR compliance helps healthTech companies achieve the following things –
Health-tech businesses rely majorly on building trust and maintaining it with their users because individuals need to feel comfortable sharing their most personal data with a commercial entity like a healthcare company. In fact, many patients are suspicious of such an exchange of personal information and important health data.
Talking about statistics, in a global survey of more than 7,800 people, it was found that 55% of people don’t trust tech companies to keep digital health information secure. There was a case in 2019 in which information about millions of NHS patients was found to be sold to pharmaceutical companies abroad.
As a result, 27% of people are willing to try virtual care from well-trusted companies such as:
Because for them, transparency is crucial, and patients want to focus on getting better in terms of their health and not on constantly checking their privacy settings.
Health-tech entrepreneurs can accomplish some of the most amazing things, but only if they’re given access to the right data. In the healthcare sector, more than any other sector, the patient-business relationship is emotional because the healthcare industry, by its very nature, is emotional. That means this industry can’t afford to have any error.
Only if you get the privacy of personal information right will you be able to create loyal customers who believe in your business. On the contrary, if you lose a patient’s personal health data, you could traumatize them while opening yourself up to litigation. In fact, you could also face a barrage of bad reviews on social media. This means you should put your users and their best interests first.
According to some sources, medical information is among the most valuable data on the black market. This is the reason there has been a boom in ransomware attacks affecting healthcare. Cybercriminals believe they are more likely to be paid in health-tech because of the nature of services in the healthcare industry.
For instance, in 2020, the fitness wearables company “Garmin” paid $10 million to hackers to free its systems. As a result, there has been a number of attacks on public health services across Europe.
In Germany, the number of successful cyberattacks on health service providers operating critical infrastructure more than doubled in 2020 compared to 2019. Likewise, France also reported 27 major cyberattacks against health institutions recently.
In the UK alone, the health-tech sector has attracted more than $7.7 billion from investors over the last five years, making it the second-biggest category in the national technology sector.
The healthcare industry is so large that technology giants such as Facebook, Apple, and IBM are also eager to expand their operations into healthcare. Therefore –
Amazon has recently launched a wristband that tracks health data of health-conscious people, and
Google is expected to pay $19.7 billion to purchase Nuance Communications, a pioneer in conversational AI for the healthcare sector.
The potential for this multi-million-dollar sector is huge, but privacy is one of the most important aspects of the process. Investors want to know whether a company has the right procedures, the right training, and the right culture in place to prevent future regulatory fines or reputational damage in the event of a security breach.
HealthTech is a highly regulated sector. Looking at data protection and privacy concerns, there is strict guidance governing medical devices, including –
However, Privacy Compliance Hubs such as GDPR compliance provide a clear and easy-to-understand checklist that employees of HealthTech organizations can follow and implement. This eventually reduces the need to remember each step. As up to 90% of data breaches are caused by human error, it is imperative that your team has the right tools to meet the regulatory demands of GDPR compliance.
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