Consumers More Discerning About Health Data Sharing: Survey

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Dive Brief:

• Consumers are willing to share their health data, but they’re becoming pickier about which entities they’ll provide that information to, according to a survey from consultancy and digital health venture capital firm Rock Health. 
• Ninety percent of respondents said they’d share their data with at least one healthcare entity, the survey found. While 64% reported they’d offer data to a doctor or clinician, only 7% would share with a technology company.
• Consumers were also willing to share data with fewer entities in 2023 compared with 2020. The wariness is a warning for the sector, as data sharing is key to informing new treatments, studying disease trends and training healthcare artificial intelligence models, the report said. 

Dive Insight:

The 2023 survey, which asked more than 8,000 U.S. adults about digital health and virtual care, found the vast majority of consumers were still willing to share their health data, similar to results from 2022 and 2020. Survey results from 2021 were excluded due to methodological changes. 

But when asked about sharing with particular entities, the proportion of respondents who were willing to share dropped across nearly all groups. For example, 72% said they’d offer data to a doctor or clinician in 2020, compared with 70% in 2022 and only 64% last year. 

Overall, participants were willing to share their data with fewer entities: On average, they reported they would provide their health data to 2.7 entities in 2023, compared with 3.4 in 2020. 

Hesitation around data sharing might relate in part to security, report authors Madelyn Knowles, Adriana Krasniansky and Ashwini Nagappan wrote. Consumers see news about large data breaches or cyberattacks, and they’ll want healthcare organizations to invest in cybersecurity. 

The survey also asked consumers about virtual care and use of at-home diagnostics, trends that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last year, 76% of respondents reported having ever used virtual care, similar to surveys in previous years. Those who had recently used telehealth said they chose it for greater convenience, shorter wait times and the desire to see a specific provider who wasn’t available in-person.

Most consumers had also used home diagnostic tests. Seventy-two percent said they had previously used an at-home test, like diagnostics for fertility, sexually transmitted infections or COVID-19. But 64% of them had exclusively taken COVID-19 tests, suggesting consumers aren’t as familiar with other types of home diagnostics.