What is Data Sovereignty in Healthcare?
Data sovereignty in healthcare is the implementation of proactive measures to protect patient data through legal and physical controls in the region where it is collected and stored.
Global privacy frameworks continue to evolve as healthcare becomes more digital and AI-enabled. The residency of health information must be managed according to these regional laws, as these legally define where data must be stored and how it must be protected.
Modern care practices handle increasingly complex and large volumes of sensitive information. Every healthcare system must then meet strict security and compliance standards to ensure confidentiality and accountability for patients.
To avoid legal implications, healthcare providers like Heidi must uphold sovereignty requirements and implement respective data guardrails.
What Does It Mean That Heidi Prioritizes Healthcare Data Sovereignty?
Heidi is committed to upholding health data sovereignty, which shows our capability to enforce and document where healthcare data resides.
Patient Data Remains within Legal Jurisdiction
Heidi ensures data sovereignty by localizing its cloud infrastructure to the regional jurisdiction where the data is collected. This localization means that patient data is processed and stored exclusively within the country of origin, mitigating foreign risks and ensuring strict compliance with local privacy laws, such as the APPs, HIPAA, PIPEDA, GDPR, and others.
Our compliance frameworks are therefore aligned with territorial laws and include robust measures like pseudonymization and non-retention policies to safeguard patient privacy.
Only the Provider and the Patient Have Access to Data
During consultations, Heidi captures and securely transmits data with proper encryption controls that protect the recording at every step. Once the audio is converted into temporary draft notes that clinicians can verify and finalize, the drafts can be deleted from Heidi. Only the clinician has access to these drafts, and they cannot be retrieved once removed.
Patient consent is mandatory, and individuals retain the right to specify who is granted access, use, or processing rights for their data.
Overall Enhancement of Trust and Safety
Patient data is protected by localized regulations such as the GDPR in the EU, NHS guidelines in the UK, and other provincial laws in Canada and state laws in the US. These laws govern the processing and sharing of patient data, not only within clinical workflows but across the wider healthcare ecosystem.
With a clear understanding of why Heidi prioritizes data sovereignty, we can now examine the measures it takes to uphold it.
How Does Heidi Practice Healthcare Data Sovereignty?
Heidi employs strong governance principles to maintain our platform’s trustworthiness and integrity. This includes real-time safety monitoring, regular penetration tests and system audits, robust encryption protocols, and security attestations.
We uphold these governance standards with proof for data sovereignty to ensure that Heidi doesn’t just meet but exceeds the expectations of the industry and provides a safe tool for care providers.
Heidi ensures data is hosted within the user's specific region
Our data hosting adheres completely to all relevant region-specific laws and regulations. Clinical data never leaves the jurisdiction.
We maintain data hosting arrangements that consistently meet or surpass the due diligence standards required by these legal frameworks, ensuring our customers can be fully confident in our compliance.
Heidi supports strong data residency and security controls
Heidi is designed with technical and organizational controls to reduce the risk of unauthorized access. We support regional hosting to help customers meet data residency requirements, and we apply strict access controls and audit logging to protect customer data.
Heidi implements data minimization by design
Heidi ensures that there is no extra information ever retained or collected, and that data is used purposefully, only where necessary. Data quality is also ensured through our continuous processes for validation and monitoring. This way, Heidi keeps a legal and necessity-based way to process data.
Healthcare data sovereignty matters most in rural health systems where continuity of care and clinician well-being are tightly linked. At San Luis Valley Health in Colorado, Heidi helped clinicians regain control of documentation without disrupting existing systems.
“We’re a rural community, so access matters. The less time we spend documenting, the more patients we can see and the more care we can provide,” quips Laticia Hollingsworth, PA-C. This highlights how real-time documentation is crucial in reducing their work after-hours and also improves care delivery for the wider community.
“You just need to try it. Spend half a day–it will change your life.” Time spent on patient encounters has lowered from 30 to 20-minute appointments, without compromising quality. For the team, Heidi supports their care decisions where patients live and clinicians practice.
Heidi Upholds Data Sovereignty Standards to Safeguard Care
Our priority as the world’s leading AI care partner is to keep care delivery protective of patients and their data by taking compliant, comprehensive measures.
Processing operations for your data are safe with us at Heidi, as we actively reduce risk exposure. Adhering to global compliance regulations helps us maintain data accuracy and relevance. Should you have any concerns about data security, we’re here for you.
