What is Patient Data? Types, Uses & Hospital Patient Databases

Patient Data Explained

Safeguarding patient data is crucial to ensure privacy, confidentiality, and compliance with data protection regulations.

Examples of patient data include demographic information (such as name, age, and gender), medical history, laboratory test results, diagnoses, treatments, medications, and imaging reports. Patient data is used by healthcare professionals to provide appropriate care, make informed decisions, monitor patient progress, and conduct research. In this page, you’ll find the best data sources for patient data.

Patient Data Collection

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.

Main Attributes

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.

Use Cases

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 purchase.