Highland Marketing appointed to support FairWarning in raising awareness of its privacy breach detection solutions

Solutions developed to protect patient privacy and healthcare provider reputations

Highland Marketing has been appointed by FairWarning, Inc., to provide PR support to help the company in its mission to protect patient privacy. With the widespread growth of electronic health record (EHR) data breaches within the UK healthcare sector, FairWarning will be campaigning to raise awareness of this issue and educating healthcare providers as to how they can act in order to protect their reputations, patients and staff.

As a pioneering US based company, FairWarning has developed the first solution of its kind which enables healthcare providers to monitor their electronic health record systems and detect security breaches. This can be vital in preventing personal information from being stolen and falling into the ‘wrong hands’. By enabling resources to be allocated to the specific task of tackling patient record breaches by staff, healthcare providers will not only be able to meet their legal obligations but will have laid firm foundations on which to build ever-more sophisticated and effective forms of electronic patient care.

The FairWarning solution has already been welcomed in Scotland where its surveillance system is being rolled out across the health service after a successful pilot with NHS Lothian. A six-month trial is also underway with the NHS Wales Informatics Service. The company is now targeting to work with public and independent healthcare providers, throughout the rest of the UK, to raise the issue of data security higher up their agenda, highlighting its importance in terms of patient care and their own reputations.

Having been selected, Highland Marketing will focus on delivering an issues based campaign to raise awareness of the need and urgency to identify, and prevent, EHR patient data breaches to uphold healthcare provider reputations. A key objective will be to position FairWarning as an ‘industry expert’ and ‘thought leader’ in the monitoring and protection of patient privacy and highlighting the implications for healthcare providers who continue to maintain ‘weak security strategies’.

Kurt Long, CEO and founder of FairWarning, Inc., said: “FairWarning’s mission has always been to provide healthcare providers with a tried and true privacy breach detection and prevention solution that ensures the uninterrupted growth of electronic health records. Our continued success and growth is attributable to the growing number of healthcare providers who are committed to ensuring greater patient privacy protections, and effectiveness and efficiencies in patient care.

“Now targeting the UK we were looking for an agency that could quickly generate impact and awareness around protection of patient privacy in electronic health records. We chose Highland Marketing because of the success achieved in a previous campaign they worked on to help FairWarning promote its UK country-wide Patient Privacy Outcomes survey (click here for full press release). The campaign resulted in significant media coverage.”

Mark Venables, CEO, Highland Marketing said: “Electronic health records bring enormous benefits to patient care, but there is growing concern about gaps in security. Recent high profile cases of the misuse of confidential patient information have shown the damage and distress that can be caused when sensitive medical information is leaked. FairWarning has done a tremendous job in promoting better data security in North America and we believe it can achieve great things in the UK.

“Our introduction to FairWarning came through a recommendation from an existing client who positioned us as an ideal partner to help the company create the relevant ‘noise’ in the market through our extensive knowledge and contacts within the healthcare, computing, national and security media.”