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Creating a healthy workplace is not just the right thing to do for employees. It’s also essential to a successful business. Healthcare costs associated with employee illness were staggering even before the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent study, the Integrated Benefits Institute estimated that US employers spent over half a trillion dollars ($575 billion) annually on poor employee health. Out of every dollar companies spent on healthcare, they lost $0.61 due to illness or injury.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) is a U.S. federal law. It sets national standards for health care providers to maintain the privacy of patients' protected health information (PHI), including electronically protected health information (ePHI). If you collect, store, or process any kind of patient or medical data, you need to be aware of HIPAA and how it affects your operations. But what does it really mean to be HIPAA compliant?

In HeathTech apps, it’s often the case that you’re dealing with private or health-related data. This requires compliance with regulations, such as HIPAA in the United States. These regulations force you to handle sensitive data in a well-defined manner, so only specific people can read it, and if they do, it should be logged for later auditing.

A year of virtual meetings, homeschooling, and social distancing has taken a toll on all of us. According to a 2021 article from the Kaiser Family Foundation, around 40% of Americans have reported symptoms of depression and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mental health providers worldwide are struggling to meet increased patient demand while navigating increased telehealth needs.

Healthcare information is perhaps the most important data in our lives. Your health records can contain your medical history, results of tests and scans, and details of current health insurance. This data is a special class of personally identifiable information, and HIPAA is the law that protects it.

When we talk about a healthy lifestyle, we know it takes more than diet and exercise. A lifelong practice of health requires discipline, logistics, and equipment. It is the same for data health: if you don’t have the infrastructure that supports all your health programs, those programs become moot.

In late 2020, a CEO at an American bank revealed the thinking that’s becoming common in many businesses these days. “We’re a 103-year-old bank,” their CEO told me. “We’re doing everything on spreadsheets. But we are trying to become a highly profitable, digital-first bank that anticipates financial needs and empowers our clients with frictionless experiences. We need to become a data company.”

As COVID-19 vaccinations continue to roll out, organizations across industries prepare to return employees to the workplace. It’s a journey fraught with anxieties, uncertainty, and unknowns. In a recent poll of Appian webinar participants, a mere 17% reported that their companies feel fully prepared to reopen facilities, and only 51% said they felt even “somewhat” prepared. The good news is that a safe return to the workplace is not uncharted territory.