5 things healthcare organizations should look for in HIPAA-ready analytics

Digital analytics is essential for how healthcare organizations acquire patients, expand access, and understand user patient journeys. As HIPAA enforcement tightens, many legacy analytics tools create compliance risk and restrict visibility into sensitive patient interactions.

Piano Analytics provides a HIPAA-ready alternative, with custom BAAs, enabling healthcare teams to measure and optimize the full patient journey with compliant data collection, secure infrastructure, and insights without compromise – so organizations can modernize their analytics and maintain strong marketing tactics without increasing regulatory exposure.

What is HIPAA?

HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) is a US federal law that protects Protected Health Information (PHI) – data that can identify someone and is tied to their health, care, or payment for care.

Do analytics tools fall under HIPAA?

Data many analytics tools collect by default – like IP addresses, device IDs, appointment searches, portal activity, and form submissions – generally counts as PHI when gathered by healthcare organizations.

In many cases, the answer is yes – an analytics tool you use is treated as HIPAA Business Associate, with strict requirements around how data is collected, used, protected, and governed.

What this means for you

Compliance is now part of analytics decisions
If your analytics setup collects or shares PHI, it falls under HIPAA. Tools that aren’t designed for this create real risk for the organization – even when teams think they’re being careful.

You see less of the patient experience than you think
When analytics can’t be used on portals or health-related flows, key parts of the patient journey go unmeasured. That makes it harder to understand where patients struggle, drop off, or fail to complete important actions.

Decisions take longer and feel less certain
Patient data often lives across websites, portals, apps, call centers, and internal systems. When it isn’t connected, teams spend more time reconciling numbers than improving experiences.

5 things to look for in a HIPAA-ready analytics platform

If an analytics tool handles patient data, it should meet all of the following:

A signed Business Associate Agreement (BAA)
Clear data collection framework
Customizable user permission controls, access, and sharing
Defined breach response processes
Transparency around data handling

Why healthcare teams choose Piano Analytics

Compliance handled by design
Piano signs BAAs at all tiers and meets HIPAA Privacy, Security, and Breach Notification requirements. Your data remains fully owned by your organization and, unlike legacy providers, is never used for advertising purposes.

Clear rules and strong protections for patient data
Data use is tightly defined, access is controlled, and information is protected – so teams can measure confidently without added risk.

Full visibility into real patient journeys
Track user behavior across websites, mobile apps, patient portals, call centers, and offline touchpoints in near real time (<2 min).

More usable data, without added exposure
Privacy-first architecture and regulatory exemptions allow Piano to capture 40-80% more usable data than GA4, while staying aligned with HIPAA.

Faster, more reliable answers
Use Piano AI to ask questions in plain language. Get answers grounded in your data on what’s happening and what to do next – accelerating analysts' insight and empowering non-technical users without SQL knowledge.

Fits into the systems you already use
Piano integrates with Snowflake, Salesforce, and 70+ other tools, making it easy to connect analytics to the rest of your healthcare data stack.