Pushwoosh guarantees HIPAA compliance for secure healthcare messaging
For Pushwoosh customers in the healthcare sector, handling sensitive health information requires the highest level of protection and adherence to strict regulations.
That’s why Pushwoosh ensures HIPAA compliance, safeguarding the security and privacy of Protected Health Information (PHI). Pushwoosh has been officially recognized for its commitment to HIPAA compliance by undergoing a rigorous independent assessment conducted by Riskro India.
With Pushwoosh, you can be confident that health information is handled with the utmost care and protection.
Understanding HIPAA
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. federal law that sets national standards to protect sensitive patient health information (PHI) from being disclosed without the patient’s consent or knowledge.
Under HIPAA, two key types of organizations are responsible for safeguarding PHI:
• Covered entities include health plans, healthcare providers, and healthcare clearinghouses that electronically transmit health information.
• Business associates are individuals or companies that perform services for or on behalf of a covered entity and have access to PHI—billing companies, IT providers, cloud storage vendors, and customer engagement platforms.
HIPAA includes the Privacy Rule and the Security Rule:
• The Privacy Rule protects the privacy of individuals’ identifiable health information.
• The Security Rule sets national standards for protecting electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI) that is created, received, used, or maintained by a covered entity or business associate.
HIPAA-compliant messaging: partnering safely with a customer engagement platform
When a health app partners with a HIPAA-compliant customer engagement platform—such as Pushwoosh—several compliance-driven processes are automatically established:
• Business Associate Agreement (BAA):
The health app, as a covered entity, enters into a BAA with the platform, which becomes a business associate.
• Security and privacy safeguards:
The platform applies administrative, physical, and technical controls to protect electronic PHI (ePHI). These include encryption, secure access protocols, activity logging, and data integrity checks.
• HIPAA-compliant message delivery:
Communications—such as appointment reminders, test results, or medication notifications—are delivered using workflows and channels that meet HIPAA privacy and security requirements.
• End-to-end compliance assurance:
Every step of data handling is covered by HIPAA-aligned protocols, ensuring sensitive health information is protected throughout the customer engagement process.
Achieving HIPAA compliance: Pushwoosh’s rigorous process & independent validation
To ensure our practices meet the stringent requirements and provide confidence in our security posture, we underwent a comprehensive end-to-end gap assessment conducted by an independent third party, Riskpro India.
Based on their thorough review of our platform and processes against HIPAA requirements, the assessment highlighted several key strengths:
✅Pushwoosh has implemented adequate HIPAA and Information Security specific policies, procedures, technical, administrative, and physical safeguards in place to protect the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of the information processed by the application.
✅Pushwoosh possesses a robust Information Security Management System (ISMS).
✅ We have clearly identified and documented the scenarios in which we will access ePHI, ensuring transparency and defined boundaries.
Pushwoosh’s HIPAA compliance is not a one-time certification but a continuous commitment to safeguarding health data.
Enhanced PHI protection: the Encrypted Tags feature
As part of our commitment to the highest standards of data security, especially for customers working with PHI, Pushwoosh offers Encrypted Tags, a feature designed to ensure sensitive user data is securely processed and stored.
Customer segmentation and personalization often rely on user attributes stored in tags, and some of these attributes might constitute PHI (e.g., health conditions, treatment details). Encrypted Tags allow you to store this sensitive information in an encrypted format within the Pushwoosh platform.
With Encrypted Tags, the data stored in designated tags is encrypted at rest. Accessing the actual value of these encrypted tags typically requires specific decryption keys or secure API calls, preventing unauthorized plain-text access to potentially sensitive user attributes stored for targeting or analytics purposes.
This provides an extra layer of technical safeguard, further supporting HIPAA compliance by protecting PHI stored within your user base.
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If you’re looking for more insight into our compliance posture, the full HIPAA compliance report from Riskpro India is available upon request under an NDA.
Please contact our support team to obtain a copy:
Interested in using Pushwoosh for healthcare communications while ensuring HIPAA compliance? Contact our sales team to discuss signing a Business Associate Agreement and learn more about how we protect your data:
