The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a U.S. law that was enacted in 1996. It sets standards for the protection of sensitive patient data.
It would apply to any website which collects, captures, or displays any form of personal healthcare data.
Key Provisions
The key requirements of HIPAA that would affect a website, particularly one dealing with healthcare data, include:
- Privacy Rule: This rule requires healthcare providers to protect and secure patient information. Websites that collect or handle such information need to have measures in place to ensure that the data is kept confidential and is not disclosed without the patient's consent or knowledge.
- Security Rule: This rule outlines three types of security safeguards required for compliance: administrative, physical, and technical. For a website, the technical safeguards are most relevant and require access control, audit controls, integrity controls, and transmission security.
- Breach Notification Rule: If there is a breach of unsecured protected health information, covered entities must provide notification of the breach to affected individuals, the Secretary of HHS, and, in certain circumstances, to the media.
- Enforcement Rule: This rule contains provisions relating to compliance and investigations, the imposition of civil money penalties for violations of the HIPAA Rules, and procedures for hearings.
- Patient Rights: HIPAA affords certain rights to patients, including the right to receive a notice of privacy practices, the right to access and amend one's own medical records, and the right to request restrictions on disclosures.
These rules apply to "covered entities," which include health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers, as well as their "business associates," which are any entities that handle protected health information on their behalf.
Design Impacts
For website design and operation, this typically means:
- Implementing strong access controls (like two-factor authentication)
- Encrypting data in transit and at rest
- Logging and monitoring access to sensitive data
- Regularly assessing and updating security measures
For Webflow Specifically;
- Memberships will not be suitable for a HIPAA-compliant login since it does not provide for 2FA.
- The CMS would not be suitable for any form of healthcare data storage. While it might meet storage requirements, Webflow does not provide any mechanisms for the secure storage and retrieval of user-specific data, so there is no means to securely restrict access to a single user.
- External login control ( Memberstack or Wized ) and external data storage ( Xano ) may be able to provide for HIPAA-compliant
- Note that the logging and monitoring requirement adds a lot of complexity, and will likely require a custom API design.
Non-compliance can result in severe penalties, so entities subject to HIPAA should consult with a legal expert or a privacy and security professional to ensure they meet all requirements.
