The State of Play for the Use of Online Tracking Technology in Health Care
In the wake of significant push back – including litigation in the Northern District of Texas – the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was compelled to moderate its position on the use of online tracking technologies.
Online tracking technologies are scripts or codes that collect information about users on websites or mobile apps. They have become an important part of today’s digital marketplace because they allow website owners to collect data revealing how users interact with their websites. These insights inform, among other things, how businesses market services and allocate advertising resources. Although these technologies were initially implemented in the ecommerce space, today even the health care industry relies on them.
As a result, HHS, which policies unauthorized disclosures of protected health information (PHI), is wading into the debate over these online tracking technologies. To understand the state of play and its implications for the future, some context is needed.