Chicago-based Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Meta, Facebook and Instagram were named in a lawsuit filed last week accusing the hospital of sharing sensitive patient health data with the social media companies.
The federal lawsuit, filed in Illinois, alleges that Northwestern Memorial Hospital allowed Facebook’s tracking tool, dubbed Meta Pixel, to unlawfully collect private medical information from the hospital’s patient portal to use for its own profit, Becker’s reports.
The plaintiff is seeking compensatory damages, class-action status and an order that Northwestern remove any code from its patient portals that may jeopardize patients’ protected health information.
Similar lawsuits have been filed against UCSF Medical Center and Dignity Health in which the plaintiff alleges that the tracking tool collects sensitive medical information without consent from patient portals. Read more.
