A lawsuit filed against University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics alleges that the health system installed pixel tracking technology on its websites that shared patient data with Facebook, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported April 24.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, alleges that the health system used a Facebook pixel on two of its websites.
Via the pixels, Facebook was allegedly able to acquire patient's information they would input on the health system's websites including types of medical treatment patients seek out, specific health conditions and booked medical appointments, as well as each individual's unique Facebook user ID, according to the suit.
A spokesperson from University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics did not respond to the publication's request for comment on the suit.
This comes after a Health Affairs study found that 98.6 percent of U.S. hospital and health system websites implemented tracking technologies that sent patient data to third-party companies such as Alphabet, Meta and Adobe.