Is Your Personal Health Data Safe? with Whitney Isola

Is your personal health data truly secure? You might be surprised.

Many of us don't realize how our health information is being collected, shared, and monetized without our knowledge or consent.

In this eye-opening episode, we explore the evolving landscape of personal health data and what you need to know to protect yourself.

BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• How personal health data has expanded far beyond just medical records
• The striking impacts of digital health data that most people are unaware of
• Practical steps you can take to better secure your sensitive health information

Don't miss this crucial conversation about safeguarding your most personal data in the digital age.

CONNECT WITH WHITNEY ISOLA

Chapters

• 0:00 Evolution of Personal Health Data
• 5:29 The Impact of Digital Health Data
• 11:01 Data Breaches and Health Information Protection

Transcript

Whitney: 0:00

Personal health data has gotten in devices and it's on our phones and it's living in a lot of different places. Now People don't necessarily think of their fitness steps or their Apple Watch as personal health data, but we're kind of living and breathing it more in real time without even realizing it.

Dr. Tamar: 0:18

Welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrogenomics, part of the Pharmacy Podcast Network, a must-have resource for pharmacist entrepreneurs seeking to enhance patient care while enjoying career and life. Join us as we pivot into Nutrigenomics, using pharmacy and nutrition for true patient-focused care. Explore how to improve chronic conditions rather than just manage them. Celebrate entrepreneurial triumphs and receive priceless advice. Align your values with a career that profoundly impacts patients. Together, we'll raise the script on health and pivot into a brighter future. Hello and welcome to Pivoting Pharmacy of Nutrigenomics. I'm Dr Tamara, lawful Doctor of Pharmacy and Certified Nutritional Genomics Specialist.

Dr. Tamar: 1:08

In today's digitally interconnected world, we're quick to count steps, track sleep and monitor heart rates through the tiny devices on our wrists. With technology's rapid advance, our health data has become more accessible than ever. But at what cost Is your health data safe? Is the pressing question we're tackling with the remarkable Whitney Aisala.

Dr. Tamar: 1:31

Whitney is a dynamic force in the healthcare industry, currently serving as a chief of staff at Archer Review, where she plays a crucial role in shaping operational and strategic trajectories. With a solid foundation as a registered dietitian, whitney has been pivotal in innovating nutritional care practices and later co-founded OncoPower, a supportive care platform for oncology patients, as an advocate for leveraging technology in healthcare education and delivery. Whitney's insights promise to enlighten us on how technology can empower, and sometimes compromise, our health data integrity. Today, let's get a clearer picture of the digital health data landscape, unraveling how our private medical details are collected, who is peeking into this intimate part of our lives without permission, and what this all means for the future of our health privacy. Listen in Well, whitney, thank you for joining us on Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. I am looking forward to our conversation today, centered around health information. Now, can you tell us about yourself?

Whitney: 2:36

Yeah. So first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited for the dialogue today. I am a registered dietitian by training, so I have my kind of traditional healthcare experience in the cog of clinical nutrition. I had a fairly typical career trajectory in that I worked in a community hospital in a multidisciplinary medical practice setting and eventually with a large New York City health system doing some clinical, doing some operational roles, and so all throughout that journey I always gravitated towards working on something or working on consulting projects or things like that that were kind of outside of my comfort zone and outside of my realm and in parallel with my work life, so to speak. And so I had co-founded a company that put out a supportive cancer care platform and then have kind of parlayed a lot of those relationships with investors, as well as with other entrepreneurs, into my current role with Archer Review, which is an ed tech platform for educating nursing and medical professionals.

Dr. Tamar: 3:52

Could you share with our listeners how the concept of personal health data has evolved over the decade?

Whitney: 3:58

Yeah, originally we sort of saw personal health data as something that we didn't have access to or that maybe just lived in like a either a paper record or a medical record, even if it was electronic, like it kind of lived and housed itself with our physician or the doctor's office. But personal health data has gotten its legs under it right, it's like in devices and it's on our phones and it's still being collated at the point of care and with these major health systems, but it's much more malleable and it's living in a lot of different places now. So I think people don't necessarily think of their fitness steps as personal health data or their Apple Watch as personal health data. But we're kind of living and breathing it more in real time without even realizing it.

Dr. Tamar: 4:53

Yeah, that's so true, it's actually everywhere, because even I have a Samsung not promoting Samsung. I'm not saying this is not a ad, but I'm sure most of the phones do that. You can put in your information in the phone for emergencies so that emergency personnel they happen to find you know can find some information about you right away. So our information is readily accessible if we allow it to be. And yet, indeed, with our the watches and the phones fitness apps, everything can be tracked right now. So that is health data. Now, in your opinion, um, what are the most striking impacts of digital health data that the average person may not be?

Whitney: 5:37

aware of the entire concept of data ownership is really an interesting area, because people don't kind of realize that like that is theirs to benefit from.

Whitney: 5:50

But meanwhile these large companies and particularly like de-identified data in aggregate have realized how valuable that is, and so I think what people don't realize is that, like our data is kind of constantly being repackaged and resold and the interactions that we're having with devices are driving bottom line revenue for a lot of really major companies.

Whitney: 6:19

So I would love to see some sort of world where there's better traceability back to the original end user and there's a little bit better personal data ownership so that the individual has the right to lease their health data to entities that they're comfortable with having it, because there's so many beneficial things that can come from that.

Whitney: 6:40

To lease their health data to entities that they're comfortable with having it, because there's so many beneficial things that can come from that, particularly from, like a research perspective, because you can't we can never like totally mimic the real world in a research setting, but meanwhile if we're getting all of this like real world data, it's informing how people make decisions and like behaviorally interact with the world in a way that's different than you can kind of mimic in a lab, but I am a strong believer that that should trickle down to the end user who's giving that data up and, like data resources, begin to engage with the end user in such a way where they can like get monetary benefit from turning over that information. Right now they're not. These big corporations are right, I like that.

Dr. Tamar: 7:31

I like that idea.

Whitney: 7:32

Pay me to get my information yeah, yeah, like a little uh subscription fee every year. Like, hey, you want info on me? I'm I'm just going to live my life and make certain decisions like how I want. But sure you can try to understand the tentacles of that, just pay me for it and that makes me curious.

Dr. Tamar: 7:50

I wonder, you know about this power balance, you know, in the ecosystem of personal health data, who truly owns this information? Is it me, the individual, the health providers or the tech companies? Who is it?

Whitney: 8:02

Right, right, I mean all three and none at once, right? It most often is housed in a professional health care setting. However, a lot of those health systems have smartened up to ways to leverage that information. And then, obviously, when we're talking about apps and third-party resources and things like that, then that ends up being housed with the tech companies and, at the end of the day, it's always ours to be able to decide if we're going to use something or not use it, if we're going to sign off on the terms and conditions and things like that. But at the same time, there's kind of an inflexibility there because we as individuals, we are reliant on a lot of these resources, and so you kind of have to sign on to be able to gain the benefit.

Whitney: 8:53

Right, it's almost like we don't have a choice when we find these consents you know, I guess like the choice is just in which companies to interact with and engage with. It's not like whether to use them or not.

Dr. Tamar: 9:05

Oftentimes, Now we hear a lot about data breaches and privacy concerns. How secure is our health data in reality and what should we be doing to protect it?

Whitney: 9:19

Yeah, that's such a good question. Number one, you do want to kind of trust your gut and like be attuned to good hygiene as it relates to software. So making sure that as simple as like, making sure that you are using new and randomized passwords for everything, like I get it, I'm the first person to like to be able to put a randomized password into all of the different resources and keep track of it. It sounds silly, it sounds like very basic advice, but it really is one of the top things that people can be doing for their own digital hygiene to make sure that they're not getting hacked or they're not creating vulnerabilities for themselves.

Whitney: 10:20

Being smart about, like, if your antenna is going up about an email coming through like a phishing scam, you know, trust your gut. Take that extra few minutes to read through it. You don't owe anyone anything in terms of, like, an immediate response online or answering the phone, etc. Like, take the extra time to explore it, read exactly where things are coming from. So, like, those little kind of things can be really beneficial in terms of making sure that your stuff is not getting out there, declining data sharing and cookie sharing as often as possible. That said, you're getting at these companies are responsible as well. I mean, I guess one of the good things with working with a lot of these really large companies is that they really have to have cyber insurance and things like that and they're often working with professionals that really understand that landscape and are trying to make sure that they're resourced appropriately. But data breaches do happen and it's a little frightening.

Dr. Tamar: 11:33

Yeah, that's true. It's happening frequently. I get emails, you know, and it's like you don't have any control over it. Yeah, it happens. So you change your passwords, choose strong passwords. Yeah, be careful who you're sharing information with.

Whitney: 11:47

Yes, indeed, yeah, I mean, I guess another piece of advice that's often put out there and I guess this is more from like a credit perspective than a health data perspective, more from like a credit perspective than a health data perspective is to like keep your credit reports frozen and then just like unfreeze them when you know that you're gonna have to be doing activities yeah right are relevant yeah, they are.

Dr. Tamar: 12:09

They have some credit and monitoring um companies out there will notify you if something is off or gotta stay on, gotta keep up with it.

Whitney: 12:20

You're on watchdog there's definitely tons of hacking. That goes on, but they really do go for the low-hanging fruit.

Dr. Tamar: 12:28

So you just try to not be silly now we mentioned a little bit about, like, the collection process of health information and consent. You know what consent should be mandatory before sharing health data with researchers or corporations.

Whitney: 12:45

Yeah, I mean there's certainly base guidance that's required federally to be able to meet, like health reporting requirements and patient bill of rights, health consent requirements for care.

Whitney: 13:01

So companies honestly generally do a very good job. If you're building anything tech in healthcare, you are doing your research about which requirements you have to follow, which audit system do you need to be SOC compliant, etc. Obviously, hipaa compliance is a huge issue area. So I will say, overarchingly, the digital health world is very aware of those things. I don't think that there's a lot of bad actors there, because if you're really caught doing the wrong thing, the penalties are very significant and a lot of young companies especially cannot even begin to afford to take that risk because you will just be sidelined so quickly. It's kind of an interesting area, but that is one one that consents and privacy policies and HIPAA compliance and et cetera and like where that data gets hosted in the cloud and making sure that all the servers are within compliance is an area that I will say, by and large, I've never seen like people trying to even put one toe in the gray area.

Dr. Tamar: 14:15

Now, whitney, you have something that's coming out, or how many is that already that you've been working on? Can you tell us about that, sure?

Whitney: 14:22

So with Archer Review, we are a medical and nursing test preparation and education company, and so we've recently launched a nursing school product. This is a companion product to any nursing school programs. There's 20 courses that mimic the typical design of a two to three year nursing school program. We're very well known in the NCLEX space, which is the board review for getting your RN, and we've gotten a lot of feedback from the student and user base that they just want a lot more and want to be able to have more support in their educational journey starting earlier. So we're very excited about it because we're starting to really launch a lot of products that help cover the life cycle of the nurse. So from pre-nursing exams to now nursing school, the NCLEX boards, and then we also have some products for nurse practitioners as well. So we're pretty excited about that and seeing just in the you know week and a half that it's been live seeing some real nice excitement from the user base.

Dr. Tamar: 15:39

Congratulations. That's great news and I know nursing students they need as much support as they can get because it can be challenging during that process.

Whitney: 15:49

I know it's a tough field and there's a lot of burnout and there's even like a pretty decent dropout rate before they even finish schooling. And so here we are kind of going into this huge nursing shortage, and it's starting at the point of schooling that there's not enough resources. So we're just really trying to help make a dent with that, because, you know, if we even help one more nurse enter the workforce, like that's huge.

Dr. Tamar: 16:21

Well, whitney, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us on Pivoting Pharmacy with Neutrogenomics and sharing your insights on our health information, protecting that and what you're doing for nurses of the future. Thank you, yeah, that's all I have for you today, friend. If today's conversation sparked any thoughts or questions, or even epiphanies you'd like to share, we're all ears. Take a moment to capture your takeaways, share them on Instagram or your favorite social media channel and tag us at Dr Tamar Lawful. Don't forget to hit follow or subscribe on your podcast platform of choice so you never miss an episode of Pivoting Pharmacy with Nutrigenomics. If you found today's episode enlightening, consider sharing it with a friend or colleague who might also benefit from Whitney's expertise and our deep dives into nutrigenomics and the future of pharmacy and health. See you next Friday. Until then, always remember to raise the script on health, because together we can bring healthcare to higher levels.