Telehealth startup Cerebral shared millions of patients’ data with advertisers

Re:Telehealth startup Cerebral shared millions of patients’ ... by lmkg on Friday March 10, 2023 @10:59AM (#35096070)

You are correct, but despite the article's misunderstanding of HIPAA they are covered by it. The incident is being investigated by HHS, as opposed to the FTC who dealt with the (non-HIPAA-covered) GoodRx incident from like yesterday.

According to HHS incident listing[1], the are a Business Associate. This means they handle patient data because they are contracted to do so by a HIPAA-covered entity. I've never heard of Cerebral before (and hopefully I won't again), but that likely means that their customers are the hospitals.

[1] https://ocrportal.hhs.gov/ocr/breach/breach_report.jsf

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Re:Telehealth startup Cerebral shared millions of patients’ ... by jonathankoren on Friday March 10, 2023 @01:27PM (#35098715)

> I've never heard of Cerebral before (and hopefully I won't again), but that likely means that their customers are the hospitals.

Cerebral is a mental health therapy app, but unlike most apps, they also prescribed medicine until very recently. They stopped after the FDA started investigating them for being a pill mill for schedule II controlled substances like adderall (ie amphetamine salts)

https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/9/23063356/cerebral-teleheal...

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Re:Telehealth startup Cerebral shared millions of patients’ ... by matheusmoreira on Friday March 10, 2023 @01:43PM (#35098990)

A corporation prescribing amphetamines? No doctors involved at all? How is that possible?

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Re:Telehealth startup Cerebral shared millions of patients’ ... by prepend on Friday March 10, 2023 @02:01PM (#35099279)

Doctors were involved all right, thus the “pill mill” part.

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