healow

Is healow safe?

For most patients, yes. healow is the patient app for doctors' offices that run eClinicalWorks, one of the larger electronic health record systems for US practices. Both app stores show no data used to track you, and your records stay under HIPAA because healow handles them for your practice as a business associate. We score it 69/100, below MyChart (74) and ahead of Doctolib (67).

The catch is in what we could not see. eClinicalWorks publishes little about how it secures healow, has no public bug bounty that we could find, and its privacy policy keeps the right to pass some non-medical personal data to advertising partners.

What healow collects and who holds it

healow shows your appointments, lab results, vitals, medicines and messages from your doctor's office, and lets you manage family members' accounts. It also offers doctor search, online booking and weight and activity trackers. The App Store listing has more than 730,000 ratings, and Google Play shows more than 10 million downloads.

Apple's privacy label lists health and fitness, financial, location, contact, user content, identifiers and usage data, all linked to you and all for app functionality. There is no "Data Used to Track You" section. Google Play lists a similar set and says fitness info may be shared with other organisations for app functionality, which in practice means your doctor's office.

Who controls your record matters more than the label. healow's privacy policy says it uses medical records only as a business associate of the provider, "in accordance with any instructions or restrictions provided to healow by the Provider." Your rights to see, correct or limit sharing of records go through the practice. HIPAA also lets the practice share records for treatment, payment and its own operations.

The ad partner clause

The policy has two sides. On the patient portals, healow says it does not deploy "non-essential third-party cookies or similar tracking technologies." That matters, because the biggest privacy failures linked to patient portals came from hospitals putting Meta and Google trackers on their portal pages.

On healow's public websites, the policy allows Google Analytics and targeting cookies set by advertising partners, which you can refuse in the cookie banner. It also says healow "does not generally sell" personal information, but "may disclose certain Personal Information to advertising and marketing partners," mostly in hashed or pseudonymised form. This covers personal information outside your medical record, such as contact details and website use. It is legal, and it is common, but it is broader than MyChart, where Epic says it does not sell or license your information at all.

The policy also mentions fingerprint and face data used to verify your identity. healow says it will not sell, lease or trade biometric data and deletes it after three years without use.

How secure is healow?

There is less public evidence here than for most apps of this size. Google Play says data is encrypted in transit and that you can ask for deletion. The policy describes "reasonable and appropriate safeguards" without detail. We found no bug bounty for eClinicalWorks on HackerOne, no security whitepaper, and no clear statement on whether two-step login is required.

We also found no reported breach of healow itself. Each practice decides much of how its portal is set up, including which features are switched on, so two healow users can have different experiences.

The eClinicalWorks settlement

In May 2017, eClinicalWorks and three of its founders agreed to pay $154.92 million, and three employees smaller sums, to settle a False Claims Act case brought by a whistleblower and joined by the Justice Department. The government said the company obtained certification for its EHR software by hiding faults: it "hardcoded" only the 16 drug codes needed for the test, its audit log did not record user actions accurately, and in some cases the software did not reliably record imaging orders or run drug interaction checks. The settlement also resolved claims of kickbacks to customers. There was no finding of liability.

The company signed a five-year Corporate Integrity Agreement with the HHS Inspector General, with outside reviews of its software quality. The case was about the EHR doctors use and about federal incentive payments, not about the healow app or patient privacy, so we treat it as context and not as a fine against healow.

How to use healow safely

1. Turn on fingerprint or face login and a phone passcode, so a lost phone does not open your records.
2. Reach healow only through the app or a bookmarked address. Never sign in from a link in an email or text.
3. Check who can see your account under family access, and remove people who no longer need it.
4. Refuse targeting cookies when you visit healow's websites.
5. Ask your practice, not healow, to correct your record or close your portal access if you leave.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (85) is the strongest factor: no regulator has fined healow, and the 2017 settlement concerned the EHR software. Scams and harmful content (80) is high because the app only connects you with your own doctor's office. Privacy (66) reflects no tracking in the app but a policy that allows sharing some data with ad partners. Security (62) is the weakest factor, because eClinicalWorks publishes little security detail and runs no public bug bounty.