Auto-tech series - Integral: Software automation for data privacy
This is a guest post for the Computer Weekly Developer Network written by Shubh Sinha, co-founder and CEO, Integral – a company known for its Certifications-as-a-Service technology that uses de-identified data to enable companies to discover novel insights and make business decisions.
Sinha says that safely working with de-identified data requires expert certifications… and today, expert certifications are [often] conducted by consultants who lack transparency, speed and flexibility.
Integral is an automated expert certification software that enables firms to work with data in hours, rather than months.
Sinha writes as follows…
The healthcare industry has been increasingly relying on data analytics to improve patient outcomes, reduce costs, and optimise operations. However, the use of personal health data comes with significant ethical and legal obligations, including protecting the privacy and security of the data. The downside of not working within legal and compliance bounds can range from billions in fines to severe loss of customer trust, which can impact revenues significantly.
Today, privacy preservation is carried out by expensive, slow consultants. They’ll take 6-plus months for projects and charge excessive amounts of money to ensure a specific dataset combination is compliant.
Privacy automation, defined as use of software and tools to automate consumer privacy management, can help healthcare organisations by accelerating the value of data and improving consumer well-being. By contrast to the status quo, privacy automation delivers speed for companies, which is something they desperately desire today, and protection for the consumer.
Win-win.
The science of compliance
Privacy automation can help healthcare organisations streamline compliance with regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). By automating tasks such as data mapping, risk assessments and privacy impact assessments, healthcare organisations can reduce the time and resources required to comply with these regulations and ensure high-quality privacy.
This allows organisations to focus on data analysis and innovation, rather than being bogged down by mundane administrative tasks.
Privacy automation can also help healthcare organisations improve the quality of the data they collect and/or purchase for analysis. Automated privacy tools can identify and mitigate data quality issues such as incomplete or inaccurate data, reducing the risk of errors in data analysis.
This can help healthcare organisations make more informed decisions, leading to better patient outcomes and improved operations.
Wellbeing & trust
In addition to improving compliance and data quality, privacy automation can also enhance consumer wellbeing. By providing consumers with greater control over their personal health data, healthcare organisations can increase trust and engagement with patients. Automated privacy tools can facilitate consumer consent and data-sharing preferences, enabling patients to share their data with trusted partners while maintaining control over their personal information. This can also improve the accuracy and completeness of patient data, leading to better clinical decision-making and more personalised care.
Furthermore, privacy automation can help healthcare organisations innovate and differentiate themselves in a crowded and competitive market. By using privacy automation to securely share data with partners and collaborators, healthcare organisations can unlock new insights and develop innovative products and services. This can lead to new revenue streams, increased market share, and improved patient outcomes. To further their engineering capabilities, companies can use privacy automation to streamline their development and testing processes. By automating privacy requirements and testing, healthcare organisations can reduce the risk of privacy violations and security breaches. This can help accelerate the development and release of new products and services, improving time-to-market and reducing costs.
Privacy automation can also help companies improve the quality of their products and services. Automated privacy tools can identify and mitigate potential privacy risks before they become issues, ensuring that products and services meet privacy requirements and consumer expectations. This can help reduce the risk of data breaches and regulatory penalties, while also enhancing consumer trust and engagement.
Sinha: privacy automation can help companies build a culture of privacy and security.
Finally, privacy automation can help companies build a culture of privacy and security.
By incorporating privacy and security into every aspect of their engineering processes, healthcare organisations can create a culture of privacy awareness and responsibility. This can help reduce the risk of privacy violations and data breaches, while also increasing consumer trust and engagement.
The value of data
In conclusion, privacy automation can help healthcare organisations accelerate the value of data and improve consumer well-being by streamlining compliance, improving data quality, enhancing consumer control, and facilitating innovation.
Companies can use privacy automation to further their engineering capabilities by streamlining development and testing processes, improving product quality, and building a culture of privacy and security.
As healthcare continues to rely on data analytics to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, privacy automation will become an increasingly important tool for organisations looking to succeed in a competitive and ever-evolving market.