Hospitals and health systems using pixel tracking technology on their websites may not know that the tools are sending patient information to third parties, BankInfoSecurity reported April 7.
Cory Brennan, cybersecurity and technology attorney at Taft Stettinius and Hollister, told the publication that many healthcare organizations may not be aware of how these tools operate.
Ms. Brennan said that these tools could have been implemented by marketing teams or third-party service providers, and with high staff turnover rates, the healthcare organization may not even know which tools are running on their websites.
"It could not be more important to be able to really get a full inventory and scope of those tracking technologies — and then also to start testing them — to see exactly what information is being tracked and transmitted through the use of those technologies," Ms. Brennan said.
This comes after a Health Affairs study found that 98.6 percent U.S. hospital and health system websites implemented tracking technologies that sent patient data to third-party companies such as Alphabet, Meta and Adobe.