The Scale of Healthcare Data
Healthcare organizations process massive volumes of protected health information: electronic health records, clinical trial documents, insurance claims, research datasets, and FOIA requests. HIPAA requires protection of 18 specific identifier types.
- Volume overwhelming - Thousands of documents per clinical trial, millions in EHR systems
- Format diversity - PDFs, Word docs, scanned images, faxes
- System integration - Multiple EHR systems with different formats
- 18 identifier types - Each must be found and redacted
The 18 PHI Identifiers
HIPAA Safe Harbor requires redaction of all 18 identifier types. Missing any one creates a violation:
Anthem: $16 Million HIPAA Fine
Anthem suffered a cyberattack exposing data of nearly 79 million individuals including names, SSNs, dates of birth, medical IDs, and addresses.
$16 million - the largest HIPAA settlement in history at the time.
88 Million Records in 2023
In 2023 alone, healthcare data breaches exposed the sensitive information of over 88 million patients - roughly one in four Americans.
All 18 PHI Identifiers Detected
cloak.business detects all HIPAA-required identifier types with multi-format support:
Personal
Names, dates, SSN
Contact
Phone, fax, email, address
Medical
MRN, health plan IDs
Technical
IP address, URLs, device IDs
Financial
Account numbers
Other
Vehicle IDs, biometric references
Multi-Format Support
Processing at Scale
| Scenario | Manual Review | cloak.business |
|---|---|---|
| 1,000 clinical records | 250-500 hours | ~30 minutes |
| Consistency | Variable by reviewer | 100% |
| 18 identifier coverage | Often incomplete | Complete |
| Audit trail | Manual logging | Automatic |
Key Takeaways
- 88 million patients breached in 2023 - Healthcare is the most targeted industry
- 18 PHI types must all be detected - Missing one creates HIPAA violation
- $16M fines are real - Anthem's penalty was the largest in history
- Manual redaction cannot scale - Volume of healthcare documents overwhelming
- Batch processing is essential - Clinical trials, FOIA requests require thousands of documents