AWS says Amazon Textract is now HIPAA-eligible

In another big move aimed at its healthcare clients, Amazon Web Services revealed this week that its Textract machine learning technology – which can help healthcare organizations more easily extract data from scanned documents – is now HIPAA eligible, joining a half-dozen other cloud-based AI tools. WHY IT MATTERS It's important to note that HIPAA-eligible is not the same as HIPAA-compliant – it just means that the technology is able to be customized and put to use in ways that are. Organizations can't simply install Textract and expect to be compliant. That said, with proper configurations, the tool can be deployed at healthcare and life science organizations whose tasks that require HIPAA compliance, said Textract Product Lead Kriti Bharti in an Oct. 10 blog post. "Critical healthcare information often lies within documents such as medical records and forms. Healthcare and life science organizations need to access data that is locked inside those documents in order to fulfil medical claims, streamline administrative processes, and process electronic health records," said Bharti.