Three Democratic senators have proposed legislation aimed at banning organizations from using personally identifiable health data for advertising and marketing purposes, GovInfoSecurity reported March 7.
The bill, the Upholding Protections for Health and Online Location Data Privacy Act, bans organizations from using collected health data from wearable devices and websites for the use of commercial advertising.
The bill also aims to ban organizations from selling the location of data to or by data brokers.
U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, are backing the bill, but without Republican support, it is unlikely to gain traction, according to the report.
This comes as healthcare startups and hospitals around the country have been accused of using collected healthcare data from patient portals and websites to share with tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Snapchat for advertising purposes.