Insights from Karlsgate On Safe and Privacy-Compliant Data Sharing

Transforming Healthcare Data Connectivity for Precision Insights

Written by Harte Nielson | Aug 29, 2023

Are you a life-sciences organization striving to navigate the changing landscape of patient care, precision medicine, and collaborative operations? Or perhaps you’re a healthcare provider, looking for a better way to get a 360-degree view of your patients.  

It's no secret that all corners of healthcare benefit from precision insights to make better-informed decisions and streamline patient care. In the pursuit of this comprehensive patient care, organizations across the healthcare continuum require more – and more diverse – precision data 

It's also no secret that data breaches are increasingly common, especially in healthcare. In fact, more than 325 healthcare data breaches have been reported since the start of 2023, affecting more than 40 million patients. Why are patient identities so vulnerable? The problem is, there hasn’t been a way to access the precision data needed at scale, without sacrificing the security of PHI in one way or another – until now.  

The Importance of Precision Healthcare Insights  

Before diving into better ways to secure PHI, let’s first look at why precision data is so important for healthcare organizations. By accessing invaluable information including social determinants of health (SDoH), utilization patterns, patient communication preferences, and patient-reported behaviors, we can unlock a full picture of a patient’s health.  

The benefits of precision healthcare data include: 

  • Holistic patient understanding 
  • Tailored treatment plans  
  • Proactive care and early interventions 
  • Reduced health disparities 
  • More efficient resource allocation 
  • Better research and innovation 

Ultimately, this comprehensive information empowers us to uncover unique insights specific to each patient, facilitating a better understanding of their journey and enabling more personalized, efficient, and forward-thinking care. Unfortunately, precision data means leaving individual patient identities vulnerable in the event of a data leak or breach.  

The Risks of Healthcare Data Connectivity

If healthcare data breaches are so common, why is it so hard to protect against them? While every organization has stringent security protocols in place, the reality is that the level of security needed to be HIPAA compliant is not always enough to truly keep PHI out of the wrong hands. Beyond that, exceptions are being made daily to security protocols in order to access the data required for a 360-degree patient view. These exceptions, while widely accepted throughout the industry due to the necessity of this valuable data, are ultimately putting PHI at risk.  

Additionally, these exceptions are typically being made while relying on a business associate agreement (BAA) to remain HIPAA compliant. These BAAs mean that we are relinquishing our data to someone else – and relying on that “someone else” to keep our data safe.

Many organizations are willing to take these risks, because precision insights are necessary to make important medical decisions and breakthroughs. Instead of continuing to risk PHI for the sake of precision insights, we need to look at new ways to seamlessly and securely scale data exchange at the identified patient level and streamline these collaborative operations.  

Embrace the Future of Healthcare Data Collaboration with Karlsgate

Karlsgate understands the risks and the complexity healthcare organizations face when it comes to scalable and secure data collaboration, and offers a groundbreaking solution to realize the value of identified patient data – without risking PHI or sacrificing compliance. No exceptions to security protocols need to be made, because no PHI is ever sent outside of the data owner’s firewall. 

Our next-gen technology provides a privacy-enhancing layer that seamlessly integrates into existing data operations, allowing for a free flow of insights while maintaining control of sensitive information. Now, healthcare organizations can partner with anyone, anywhere, instead of being limited to closed data ecosystems or previously tokenized or anonymized data. 

Ready to learn more and start easily unlocking precision insights? It's never been easier to simplify the complex, scale data connectivity, and collaborate seamlessly and securely with other healthcare partners. Watch our demo video or contact us today.