Todd Foley: Hello and welcome to the CDO magazine interview series. I’m Todd Foley, the Chief Digital and Information Security Officer at Lydonia. Today, I have the pleasure of talking with Melissa Mitchell, Chief Privacy Officer at Phreesia. Melissa, thank you for taking the time to talk to us today.
Melissa Mitchell: Thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Todd Foley: Great, Melissa. You mentioned that you’re constantly getting patient feedback, that you have not only FAQs but you actually take that feedback and respond to it directly. In fact, you used as an example that you yourself sometimes reply to patient questions. How do you take that feedback and use it? How has it shaped Phreesia’s product and platform, and how have the privacy practices evolved, perhaps in response to some of that feedback over the years?
Melissa Mitchell: That’s a great question. We, you know, we do — we read it, we bring it back to our product team as you said, and we use it to either change the user experience foundationally through just changing that interface or changing the way we phrase things. You know, if things can be made more clear, if options can be made more clear, we try to do that. We also just use it to explain things to patients differently. So for those patients and users that are reading our website and going and digging into those FAQs that we have or our commitment to privacy page or writing into us, you know, we have found good ways to explain. We’ve identified appropriate and easy ways to explain this nuanced area, which can sometimes be very hard to understand. But once we find that way where people say, “Oh, I understand what you mean now, I’m getting it,” you know, we hold on to that and we make sure that we repeat that and we use it in other circumstances. So, you know, while we’re incorporating feedback from a product standpoint, we’re also incorporating it as a privacy team too, just really because we have found that to be very valuable to come out and be proactive in our explanation of our business model and to be reactive to folks when they want to find out more about us. So I’ve incorporated that in our everyday work on our privacy team very much.
Todd Foley: There’s a real virtuous circle there as well, because incorporating that feedback, simplifying information, being responsive — that builds trust as well.
Melissa Mitchell: Yes, absolutely. You know, we see people being very surprised, writing in and hearing from a human and getting an answer that isn’t just an out-of-the-box response. You know, when we have an explanation that works, we use it again, but we also personalize our responses to folks that take the time to write in. So we take the time to write back to them and say, “Here’s what we think is the answer to your question. Do you have more questions? Can we help you in any way?” And that is very time consuming, but we think it is very valuable and really goes a long way in helping folks understand what we’re trying to do.
Todd Foley: Thank you. Can you give us some more examples about why people are willing to share their data? You used a great example, I think, related to convenience — when you’re traveling, you want to share information to be able to get better recommendations, to be able to make better decisions yourself. Why are patients willing to share data? What do they get from it?
Melissa Mitchell Right. I mean, I think it’s not something that folks always think about in their healthcare space — is this option and choice. You know, we have so much choice in certain spaces like shopping, right, or travel or, you know, anything having to do with online retailing and tech. You know, we can call Ubers from our phone and rideshares and, you know, we have all of this, we have so much choice in so many spaces. But I think in healthcare, we’re limited. And I think that a lot of our products are really trying to open up that space a little bit more for folks so they can know about, you know, be thinking about different things if they don’t already know about them that are relevant to their healthcare. So if they have, maybe they’re newly diagnosed with something and they don’t know all of the different options, different therapies that could be relevant, or, you know, maybe they’re in a new age bracket and, you know, there’s, you have to be thinking about certain screenings, and, you know, maybe they’ve gone to the doctor and heard about that, and maybe they haven’t. So, you know, some of our campaigns are — we do a lot of campaigns around, you know, Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer screenings, and breast cancer screenings, and even something as simple as sunscreen awareness for, you know, skin cancer institutes. We’ve worked in those kinds of campaigns too. Flu vaccines — you know, some people are thinking about that and kind of got it marked on their calendar. I’m not one of those people. So I recently used Phreesia. My doctor’s office uses Phreesia, so I went through my check-in and I did my opt-in and the personalized message I got was, “Do you have your flu vaccine? You should.” You know, and I mean, that’s relevant for a lot of us, but I really hadn’t been thinking about it. So, you know, it was a nice reminder. So that’s where I really value that choice and that range of information where I think, you know, depending on what healthcare has been like for you in your life, you may have a lot of information, you may not have a lot of information. So I think this just adds to that potential for information that a lot of people are maybe missing.
Todd Foley: So in a healthcare context, that means there are a lot of things depending on the patient, their care, their treatment that you might be talking about or giving them information on. You mentioned Alzheimer’s, skin cancer, breast cancer, vaccinations — can you give me some more detail on those? Those are all things that I would think timely information could really move the needle on.
Melissa Mitchell: Definitely. All of those are good examples, and they, like I said, might be in the form of more of a reminder in terms of, like, “This is flu season, so think about getting your flu shot.” This is a timely — a timely time to think about it. It could be, and it really could be more condition specific, right? So maybe this is, “We understand you have this condition, this therapy might be something to consider, here is a new therapy to consider.” So they’re more along the lines of sponsored and directed at a specific condition or a specific drug to help with a specific condition. So yeah, those are all really good examples. We sometimes team up with different institutes to get these things done too. So, you know, we might team up with government institutes or nonprofits that are in these spaces that are really trying to think deeply about population health and what might be relevant to certain groups of folks and what they really want to get the word out about.
Todd Foley: It’s an interesting dynamic. You have the ability to assist patients and provide them with certainly better information so if nothing else, they can make more informed decisions about their personal care but also to positively impact populations through better information, more timely information, and engagement before their visit, after their visit, in a way that is kind of unique, I guess, because of Phreesia’s role in the industry and the platform. As you look at where you want to go, whether it be how you want to enhance Phreesia’s offerings or where you would like to see some of the privacy initiatives that every state is engaging in kind of move, what would be your vision for where you think things should go or could go over the next few years?
Melissa Mitchell: All these players — privacy professionals, you know, organizations that have the power to harness this data, and users of those products all have a stake in this, and might, at the surface, you know, people might think we want different things, right? But I really don’t think that’s true when you really dig a little deeper. I think what we all want is simplicity or, you know, ease of understanding, and we also want whatever the regulation to be aligned with what people want, right? I mean, I think that’s the best scenario — if regulation can match what people’s expectations are of their privacy. So I used to work at a hospital, or I’ve worked at several hospitals, and you know, HIPAA is kind of king at healthcare providers who are regulated covered entities under HIPAA, and sometimes I believe that, you know, those providers can, you know, they’re thinking deeply about HIPAA all the time every day, checking the boxes, making sure they’re doing everything they’re supposed to be doing. But when I was in those positions, I sometimes started to think, you know, we need to do that, of course. We need to meet all of the marks that HIPAA requires, but we also really need to think about patients and what their experience is when we’re meeting all of those, right? So this was early days of cell phones being brought into examination rooms and social media and people tweeting things, and I think that was the beginning of it starting to get kind of fuzzy. But I think, you know, my thinking then was, let’s just go back to what the patient needs and wants and what their expectations are, and that was a really helpful message in that environment, you know, when things can get really serious and, you know, people’s lives are at stake in emergency departments and whatnot. And then I think I’ll take that example to today and, you know, this healthcare technology space that we’re in, which is also very confusing and can, like you said, be, you know, this dynamic, changing landscape. So I think that if we come back to that north star of just what folks want and making sure that they get what they want and we’re meeting their expectations and we’re explaining it in a way that they understand it, you know, that’s going to serve us all. That’s going to serve everybody involved, all of these stakeholders involved. So my future — I don’t know how we will get there, but I hope it will be something that’s deeply aligned to what individuals really want. And I do think that’s where we’re heading. Like, you know, on the surface, it might seem a little dynamic now, you know, and challenging now, but I think where we’re headed is if you really look at all these regulations, what they’re all saying is make sure people understand what they’re doing and what their choices are. So that future state, to me, is maybe a simplified version of it, but it incorporates people and what they want and what their expectations are.
Todd Foley: I really appreciate you sharing that perspective. It’s been a pleasure talking to you today. Thank you very much.
Melissa Mitchell: Thanks for having me.
Todd Foley: For those listening, please visit cdomagazine.tech for additional interviews, and thank you all for taking the time.
