Unsolicited data collection and promo: Doctors and Hospitals

January 8, 2021
Devinder Dhingra

Satyam (The Truth)

Most of us have been to a local doctor or hospital for treatment. And have filled an entry form as well. These days there is a trend of collecting private data like date of birth, date of wedding anniversary etc. in urban cities through these forms. Since one is ill at the time and not in a position to question or argue, one writes the information willingly or unwillingly as one’s prime goal is to get well at the earliest.

And then the ordeal starts. You start receiving unsolicited messages from such hospitals and clinics like ‘Your doctor is not available for two weeks’, ‘Wish you a happy birthday’, ‘It’s time for you to get a regular checkup’, ‘Your doctor is back’, ‘We’re running a camp’, ‘It has been seven days that you visited us’ etc. etc.

Many a time there is not even an option to unsubscribe from such promotions. Strange! Did you ask us?

Dear doctors and hospital admins, we all respect and need you but at the same time we love our privacy.

We understand that some personal data like age, gender, weight, height, married or unmarried etc. may be desired as part of the treatment. We also understand that our identification may also be needed as a part of the admission process or for some other mandatory formalities, but unsolicited data collection and promo is obviously not the right thing to do.

Most of the time, this data collection is done by third party agencies like practo who have a standard form that doctors and hospitals adopt but why should there be unsolicited messages? What’s the guarantee that these third-party agencies would not sell or misuse the personal details provided in the form?

Shivam (The Solution)

Doctors and third-party agencies like practo need to modify their forms.

Instead of the date of birth, they may ask for just the year of birth or the age as that would suffice for the treatment. The data like marriage anniversary shall have ‘optional’ written in the parenthesis, if not removed altogether. In addition, there shall be a ‘checkbox’ to specify whether one is interested to receive promotional messages or not. In case if a subscription is opted, there should be an ‘unsubscribe’ option as well and in any case, there has to be an assurance that the data collected would not be shared with anyone else.

At the time of hospitalization or otherwise when personal ID and other details are shared as a part of mandatory requirement, then too there should be an assurance of the privacy and relevant checkboxes in the form to make sure that nothing unsolicited apart from what is desired for the treatment is sent to the patient and the kin.

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