Salesforce Introduces Marketing and Commerce Cloud Features Designed to Deliver Secure, Personalized Digital Health Experiences

At HIMSS 2022, Salesforce unveiled innovations across Customer 360 for Health, including updates to Patient Data Platform* and Patient Commerce Portal**. These new features, powered by Marketing Cloud and Commerce Cloud, enable healthcare and life sciences companies to create personalized digital experiences while safeguarding patient data.

Why it’s important: Patient-centricity and maintaining trust across the entire customer journey are now table stakes. But healthcare and life sciences leaders have recently cited challenges with collaboration, data unification, connected journeys for engagement, and cohesive digital customer experiences — each of which were accelerated by the pandemic. 

• 47% of consumers believe healthcare and life sciences companies are more focused on industry needs than patient needs.
• In addition, 51% of consumers said they are concerned about the future of privacy in healthcare as technology evolves. 

Driving the news: Healthcare organizations need digital-first solutions to help strengthen patient relationships and improve health outcomes while securely connecting data to create personalized digital experiences. New features from Salesforce’s Customer 360 for Health draw on the full power of Salesforce to improve each of these areas to create trusted, connected relationships between patients, providers and payers from anywhere.  

Details:

• Patient Data Platform*, which integrates with Patient Unified Health Scoring, enables healthcare experience managers to unify disconnected data sources to create a single source of truth of their patients’ and members’ profiles – with privacy and security measures built in to help customers connect all of their end customer data in a single place while also enabling customers to meet their HIPAA compliance responsibilities. For example, a provider can unify patient clinical data with demographic data to deliver personalized engagement and recommendations during the care process, from preauthorization and preparation to post-care recovery.
  
• Patient Commerce Portal** enables healthcare and life sciences companies, such as pharmaceutical and medical device suppliers, to move into new direct-to-patient selling channels with patient privacy in mind, creating personalized shopping experiences while helping companies to meet their relevant HIPAA compliance needs. For example, patients with cystic fibrosis who require high-frequency chest wall oscillation (HFCWO) vests could purchase the devices directly through a medical equipment company rather than through a physician, with the assurance that their personal health information is secure.

• Out-of-the-Box Encryption for Commerce Cloud allows healthcare and life sciences organizations to launch digital storefronts faster by enabling such organizations to re-evaluate priorities, such as the need for custom platform development for encrypted data. Now, Commerce Cloud customers can quickly and easily store patients’ protected health information (PHI) and other sensitive data with an additional layer of security, designed so it can be accessed only by authorized users with access to encryption keys. This helps maintain consumer and patient trust while freeing up developer time. 

The industry perspective: “Salesforce’s announcement of Commerce Cloud now enabling HIPAA compliance across ecommerce channels has real benefit to prospective customers,” said Stephen Hurrell, VP and Research Director for the Office of Revenue at Ventana Research. “This means prospective users can focus more on speedily delivering value to their customers and patients avoiding delays and complexity caused by the need for customizations and third party specialist consulting help.”

Explore further:

• Read what Salesforce announced at 2022 HIMSS here.
• Explore Salesforce’s Customer Data Platform here.
• Learn more about Commerce Cloud here.
• See the full Salesforce Connected Health Consumer report here.

*The Patient Data Platform is powered by Marketing Cloud’s Customer Data Platform. 

**Patient Commerce Portal is powered by Commerce Cloud.