Patient Data: Best Patient Datasets & Databases

What is Patient Data?

Patient data is a sub-category of Healthcare data. It consists of medical information concerning individual patients. Recently, this has come to mean not just patient history, diagnosis, and treatment, but also the patient’s behavior and lifestyle.

How is Patient Data collected?

Anytime you go to a medical professional your data will be recorded by the doctors and nurses for their internal databases. This could either be by tests and observations they make on you or by information that you freely provide. It is the latter which especially gives an insight into the patient’s behaviour and lifestyle.
Similarly, the rise in health apps and products, such as smart watches, means that individual behavior is being more constantly recorded and from this patient data has evolved to include behavior data as well as basic medical information.
Research projects also provide patient data as well as historical records and family medical information.

What are the attributes of Patient Data?

The attributes of patient data can be split into two sections:
Traditional medical data - Traditional data includes information such as health history, diagnoses, current medications, vaccination record, and ongoing or historical treatments.
Newer patient information - Contemporary patient data has evolved to include more information which is less medically-focussed, so that it includes information about people who aren’t necessarily sick. New patient information includes demographic and behavioral intelligence, such as lifestyle, eating habits or patient behaviour.

What is Patient Data used for?

Patient data is used by both medical professionals and businesses:
Healthcare professionals and scientisits - Data records help manage and diagnonse individuals with medical issues. It also provides reference information for researchers to study diseases or the human body in general.
Businesses - Pharmaceutical companies rely on patient data for market research to identify gaps in the market for healthcare and medical solutions. Marketers for these companies can also use patient data for audience segmentation to target specific patients suffering the same sickness with ads for a suitable treatment.

How can a user assess the quality of Patient Data?

Because it’s classed as PII (personally identifiable information) patient data is protected by strict privacy laws. Moreover, there are doctor-patient confidentiality laws which mean it’s essential that your patient dataset is privacy-compliant. Always check that your patient data provider is GDPR and CCPA-compliant, and that their data sources follow ethical guidelines.

Due to the wide variety of patient data available, it is important to pick a dataset that is suited to your personal needs. Ask for a sample of data from the data provider before buying to ensure it matches what you are looking for and always check the data provider’s reviews before you make any purchases.

Where can I buy Patient Data?

Data providers and vendors listed on Datarade sell Patient Data products and samples. Popular Patient Data products and datasets available on our platform are Syntegra Synthetic Claims Data | Medicare Claims | Multiple Formats by Syntegra, Syntegra Synthetic EHR Data | Structured Healthcare Electronic Health Record Data by Syntegra, and Diaceutics Repository of Diagnostic Testing Data by Diaceutics.

How can I get Patient Data?

You can get Patient Data via a range of delivery methods - the right one for you depends on your use case. For example, historical Patient Data is usually available to download in bulk and delivered using an S3 bucket. On the other hand, if your use case is time-critical, you can buy real-time Patient Data APIs, feeds and streams to download the most up-to-date intelligence.