Protect PHI in your healthcare AI without losing clinical context
Protecto finds PHI in claims, records, and clinical notes and replaces it with consistent tokens before any model, agent, or tool sees it. Real values come back only where your policy allows.
James Okafor HX-55821-04 MRI lumbar spine after 6 weeks of PT
A healthcare data platform prepared its claims archive for AI
Claims documents in scope
Archive-scale processing
Every mask, reveal, and access
Why healthcare AI pilots stall after the security review
A health plan pilots an assistant that reviews prior authorization requests. Each request mixes a member’s name, ID, and dates into the clinical story. To stay safe, the team redacts every identifier before the text reaches the model.
Now the model cannot tell one member from another or match a request to past claims. Half the requests go to manual review. Nothing leaked, and the pilot saved no time. Teams that hit this often switch protection off to ship, and the risk comes back.
PHI does not sit in neat columns.
Names, dates, and member IDs sit inside claims notes, discharge summaries, and patient messages, where pattern tools built for database columns miss them.
Each AI recipient that touches PHI, such as a hosted model, a search index, a log store, or an agent, needs a permitted purpose, the minimum necessary, and often a BAA.
Without context-preserving protection, you have two bad options: redact everything and lose the clinical meaning, or send PHI to every model, index, and tool.
Healthcare AI for providers, payers, and health tech
Providers
Draft follow-up letters, summarize charts, and answer patient messages without sending identities to a hosted model. Data: clinical notes, discharge summaries, portal messages.
Payers
Run claims search, prior authorization review, and member-services assistants on tokens that still match across documents. Data: claims, billing codes, call notes.
Health tech and business associates
Ship AI features into hospitals and health plans and pass their security review, with a BAA available from Protecto. Data: whatever your customers send you.
Healthcare analytics
Build analytics and training sets from claims archives and EHR exports with identifiers removed and no mapping kept, or with reversible tokens when an approved team must re-identify.
One checkpoint between PHI and every AI recipient
Protecto runs as SaaS, on-premises, in your private cloud, or air-gapped, in the path where data enters, moves through, or leaves your AI.
Find PHI where it hides
DeepSight finds names, member IDs, and dates written into sentences, across 50+ entity types in English, Spanish, and more, plus custom entities like your member ID format. It scored a higher F1 than AWS Comprehend and Microsoft Presidio in an independent UT Dallas benchmark.
Keep the clinical context
Protecto Privacy Vault replaces each value with a consistent, format-preserving token, so the same patient gets the same token in every document. Every mask, reveal, and access is logged.
Show real values by role
Context-Based Access Control (CBAC) decides who sees real values by role and purpose. A care manager sees the patient’s name. The model and the log store never do.
Protect AI chat and agent tool calls
Protecto Privacy Gateway masks PHI on the way to the model and resolves the real value for an authorized tool call, such as a payer portal lookup.
“Protecto enabled our team to harness the full power of AI and analytics while maintaining strict HIPAA compliance and data privacy.”
Inovalon
Built for regulated data at enterprise scale.
SOC 2 Type II
ISO 27001
HIPAA
GDPR
DPDP
CCPA / CPRA
Go deeper on HIPAA and AI
HIPAA for Enterprise AI and Agents
One medical group’s scheduling agent, followed from request to booking. The questions to settle before launch, what each role, model, and vendor may receive, and the audit evidence reviewers ask for.
How accurately do tools find PII and PHI in text?
An independent benchmark by UT Dallas and DataXpert, with results by entity type, including medical record numbers.
HIPAA compliance for AI, rule by rule
Where each HIPAA rule meets your AI flow, and what Protecto does for it.
Questions healthcare AI teams ask first
Is tokenized PHI still PHI?
Yes, when a mapping exists and can be reversed. Tokenization is pseudonymization, not anonymization, so a model provider that receives tokens still needs the agreements your counsel requires. For data sets that must be de-identified, Protecto can remove identifiers with no mapping kept. See how to de-identify PHI.
Does Protecto sign a BAA?
Yes. A BAA is available when Protecto hosts the service or can access PHI. When you run Protecto in your own environment, PHI stays there.
Does HIPAA require U.S.-only hosting for AI?
HIPAA sets no U.S.-only hosting rule. State laws and your contracts may add one, so check with counsel. Protecto runs where you choose: SaaS, on-premises, private cloud, or air-gapped.
Can we use any LLM with PHI?
Yes. Protecto works with any model provider or a model you host. The model receives tokens in place of PHI, and real values return only to the people and tools your policy names. Your counsel decides which provider agreements you still need.
Will masking hurt our AI's accuracy?
Consistent, format-preserving tokens keep who-is-who intact, so the model can follow one patient through a note and across documents. Clinical facts such as diagnoses and medications stay readable.
Which data does Protecto cover?
Structured records and free text: claims, clinical notes, discharge summaries, portal messages, and call transcripts. That covers 50+ entity types across PII, PHI, and PCI in English, Spanish, and more, plus custom entities such as your member ID format.
Show us one healthcare AI workflow. We will show you where the PHI goes.
Bring a sample of claims notes or clinical text. We will run it through Protecto and walk you through what each model, index, and tool receives.
- SOC 2 Type II certified
- ISO 27001
- HIPAA compliant, BAA available
- On-premises or private cloud
