Leveraging PHI Data: Advanced Strategies for Personalized Engagement

Healthcare Marketing, HIPAA Compliant Email, HIPAA Email Marketing, Patient Engagement
Erik Kangas
November 7, 2024

As the healthcare industry grows increasingly competitive, personalized engagement has become a key differentiator for companies aiming to better connect with their patients and customers.

However, effective personalization requires more than loosely matching a patient to a product or service based on a handful of dubious demographic data points – or a message carefully crafted to assume familiarity. Instead, successful personalized patient engagement requires using data from your Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems, and Revenue Collection Platforms (RCPs) in combination with a secure communications solutions to target and tailor your messages like never before.

To help you get there, this post explores core strategies for leveraging PHI in patient engagement, as well as the benefits of integrating secure communications like HIPAA-compliant email with your CDPs, RCPs, and EHR systems. Whether you’re a healthcare provider, payer or supplier, these strategies will help you develop a data-driven approach to patient engagement that sets your brand apart, builds trust, and boosts customer loyalty and satisfaction.

Why Personalized Engagement Makes a Difference

Ultimately, personalized patient or customer engagement is vital because it strengthens relationships, fosters trust, and encourages proactive healthcare behaviors and decision-making. By taking the extra time to craft your communications to resonate with the recipient’s particular healthcare needs and pain points – and securely including it in our messages – makes your targets more likely to engage with you, now and in the future. This results in an individual becoming a more active participant in their healthcare journey: engaging in more self-education, listening to advice (e.g., screening recommendations), adhering to treatments, trying new products, and, ultimately, enjoying better health outcomes overall.

However, to reap these benefits, healthcare organizations must navigate the complexities of securely handling PHI and integrating it across communication systems and data platforms to facilitate personalized and HIPAA-compliant interactions.

Three Core Strategies for Personalized Engagement Across the Healthcare Journey

Let’s look at three essential engagement strategies that will help you achieve better results by leveraging PHI in your communications, including:

Provider-Centric Strategies:

Payer-Focused Strategies

Supplier Strategies

1. Provider-Centric Strategies: Customized Patient Pathways

Here are a few examples of how healthcare providers can employ PHI-driven personalization to increase patient engagement, using the email channel:

Reminders for Preventive Care: by segmenting patients by their risk factors and medical history, providers can send customized email reminders for preventative screenings, vaccinations, or check-ups.
Post-Treatment Follow-ups: sending patients customized follow-ups after treatment or surgery improves adherence to prescribed care plans. Providers can automate reminders, follow-up surveys, or educational materials specific to the patient’s condition, increasing engagement, and overall awareness of their health journey, and, subsequently, health outcomes.
Mental Health and Chronic Care Management: the management of both mental health and chronic disease conditions favor a high-touch, personalized approach. PHI-driven engagement enables healthcare providers to send the most appropriate regular check-ins, support resources, and reminders to reach a patient population that can fall through the cracks of outreach efforts.

2. Payer-Focused Strategies: Supporting Long-Term Health

Payers, such as health insurers, can leverage PHI for tailored member engagement that aligns with value-based care objectives, including:

Engage Members Via Their Preferred Channels: sending people information through their preferred channels, such as email, text, or phone, greatly improves the chances that they receive it and act upon it. This better ensures they receive important details, such as policy details and benefits, that will assist them on their healthcare journey, leading to higher levels of satisfaction with their coverage and more business and renewals for your company. You can gain greater insight into this in our article on How to Improve Patient Engagement with Secure Communications.
Strengthened Member Loyalty: the more that customer feel that their payer understands their unique health concerns and needs, the greater their sense of loyalty towards them. Personalized interactions increase trust and member or customer satisfaction, resulting in long-term relationships.
Proactive Retention Strategies: by analyzing customer data, payers can identify those at risk of not renewing their healthcare coverage and implement targeted communications to retain them. Personalized outreach, such as email reminders about plan benefits or assistance with the renewal process, can effectively encourage members to continue their coverage.

3. Supplier Strategies: Enhancing Customer Support and Education

Healthcare suppliers, such as medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies, can harness PHI to educate customers on the benefits of their products and services for upsell and cross-sell, in addition to offering exceptional support, training and aftercare following their purchase.

Tailored Customer Education: with PHI, healthcare suppliers can provide condition-specific educational resources that will help customers better understand how their offerings support their health. In many cases, this will be much-welcomed information, resulting in increased brand awareness, trusted relationships, and, ultimately, better health outcomes.
Personalized Adherence Programs: sending personalized reminders, or an offer of support, boosts the chances of compliance with medication or device usage instructions – both increasing their efficacy and reducing the risks that accompany their misuse. Additionally, automating emails for these follow-ups, as part of a comprehensive customer onboarding process, streamlines this process and ensures the most valuable customer experience.
Equipment Renewals or Upgrades: proactively sending customers emails and messages on new or updated products and services can lead to increased conversions and sales, by simple virtue of the fact you’re telling your customer base about them. All customers who have seen improvements in their quality of life from your products or services will be interested to hear about improvements or additions to your offerings – so seize this prime opportunity to engage with them.

The Power of Data Integration

To maximize personalization, healthcare organizations can leverage PHI across the different systems within their IT ecosystems and create unified data profiles that drive better engagement. Integrating data from Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems, and Revenue Collection Platforms (RCPs), and securely using it in communications, such as email campaigns, is a critical component of meaningful engagement and increases your ability to reach your targets. Here’s how it helps:

CDPs aggregate data from multiple channels to provide a comprehensive, centralized view of each patient or customer. By integrating PHI and other behavioral data in a CDP, healthcare organizations can better understand patient needs, preferences, and history, resulting in more precise, data-driven engagement.
EHRs boast a wealth of patient data that can be used to personalize engagement down to an individual level. By securely integrating EHR data, healthcare providers can tailor communications to reflect each patient’s unique medical history and current care plan, making successful engagement far more likely.
RCPs are essential for understanding the financial side of patient engagement. When combined with clinical and behavioral data, RCPs provide insights into a patient’s financial interactions with the healthcare system, allowing organizations to personalize payment reminders, financial assistance programs, and other revenue cycle communications. With this being one of the more contentious and stressful parts of the healthcare journey for many patients, securely communicating PHI as part of your RCP strategy can have a considerable positive impact on patient satisfaction, as well as reducing billing cycle times and their resulting admin.

By uniting data from these platforms, and other applications where critical data resides, healthcare organizations gain a comprehensive view of each patient, enabling highly-personalized interactions that improve outcomes and increase trust over time.

Safeguarding PHI: LuxSci Secure Healthcare Communications

As healthcare provider, payers and suppliers expand their use of PHI for more effective personalization, securing sensitive patient data becomes increasingly crucial. When employing the personalized engagement strategies detailed in this post, it’s essential to ensure all PHI is handled securely, if you don’t want to incur the consequences of falling out of HIPAA compliance.

LuxSci offers a suite of HIPAA-compliant, secure communication solutions designed to facilitate secure, personalized patient and customer engagement, while providing the necessary foundation to effectively use PHI in your emails. Our solutions enable healthcare organizations to optimize data integration from CDPs, EHRs, and RCPs to better personalize engagement and deliver better results. This includes:

Secure Email: protects PHI with automated, flexible encryption options that exceed HIPAA compliance requirements. This allows for high-volume, personalized email outreach without compromising privacy.
Secure Marketing: especially designed for HIPAA-compliant campaigns, LuxSci’s Secure Marketing solution boasts advanced email functionality including segmentation, automation, and deep email reporting tools, enabling impactful engagement at scale.
Secure Text: connect with patients over mobile devices by enabling access to PHI and other sensitive information via regular SMS text messages – with no installation of new applications required.
Secure Forms: LuxSci’s Secure Forms tool ensures that organizations can safely collect and process PHI, enabling seamless data capture for personalized engagement.

Interested in discovering how LuxSci’s secure healthcare communications services can help you leverage PHI for highly more personalized patient engagement?

Erik Kangas

With 30 years engaged in to both academic research and software architecture, Erik Kangas is the founder and Chief Technology Officer of LuxSci, playing a core role in building the company into the market leader for HIPAA compliant, secure healthcare communications solutions that it is today. An international lecturer on messaging security, Erik also advises and consults on email technology strategies and best practices, secure architectures, and HIPAA compliance. Erik holds undergraduate degrees in physics and mathematics from Case Western Reserve University, and a doctoral degree in computational biophysics from MIT. Erik Kangas — LinkedIn

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“Encryption Optional” Email Will Fail Audits in 2026 and Beyond

February 24, 2026
Pete Wermter

For years, healthcare organizations have relied on click-to-encrypt email workflows and secure portals as a practical compromise between usability and compliance. Or in some cases, they simply thought most of their emails did not need to be compliant. In regulated industries where data security and privacy are paramount, this approach was still considered “good enough.”

That era is ending.

As we progress into 2026 and beyond, regulators, auditors, and cyber insurers are sending a clear and consistent message: encryption that depends on human choice is no longer acceptable. It’s already happening. Encryption optional email isn’t merely raising concerns, it’s failing audits outright.

An Email Threat Landscape That’s Changing Faster Than Email Habits

Historically, email encryption was treated as a best practice rather than a hard requirement. If an organization could demonstrate that encryption tools existed and that employees had access to them, auditors were often satisfied. The box was checked, everybody moved on.

Today, the questions auditors ask are fundamentally different. Instead of asking whether encryption is available, they are asking whether sensitive data can ever leave the organization unencrypted. If the answer is yes, even in rare cases, or even accidentally, that’s no longer viewed as an acceptable gap. It’s viewed as inadequate control.

Why 2026 Is a Tipping Point for Email Security

Several forces are converging here in 2026 that make optional encryption increasingly untenable. Regulatory scrutiny around PHI and PII exposure continues to intensify. Breach costs and litigation are rising, with email remaining one of the most common vectors for data exposure and breaches. AI is also changing the game for cybercriminals, and attacks will continue to increase and be more sophisticated. As a result, cyber insurers are tightening underwriting requirements and demanding stronger, more predictable controls.

At the same time, email user behavior is unpredictable and inconsistent, which is a non-starter for data security in today’s world.

Taken together, these trends and behaviors point to a single requirement: email security controls must be automated. They must be enforced by systems, not dependent on employee memory, judgment, or good intentions.

The Reality of “Encryption Optional” in Practice

On paper, optional encryption can sound reasonable. In practice, it creates gaps large enough to open you up to a breach.

Secure portals are a good example. They require recipients to click a link, authenticate, and access content in a controlled environment. While this protects data in transit, and is a better approach than no security at all, it also introduces friction. And people don’t like friction. Senders forget to use the portal. Recipients ask for “just a quick email instead.” Shortcuts are taken to save time. And every shortcut becomes a risk.

Click-to-encrypt systems suffer from a similar problem. They rely on users to correctly identify sensitive data and remember to take action. But people often misclassify information, forget to click the button, or assume someone else has already secured the message. From an auditor’s perspective, this isn’t a training failure. It’s a set-up and control failure.

Email Security Defaults Are the New Normal

The latest message from regulators, auditors, and insurers is clear. If encryption is optional, data vulnerabilities become inevitable.

What can you do?

Below is a quick email security checklist to help you get started. Cyber insurers may require or recommend the following safeguards during the underwriting process, such as:

Multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Endpoint protection
Encrypted backups
Incident response planning
Encryption protocols for sensitive data in transit and at rest, including PHI in emails

In 2026 and beyond, healthcare organizations and regulated industries will be judged not by what they allow, but by what they prevent. Automated, encrypted email is the new. normal.

Want to learn more about LuxSci HIPAA compliant email? Reach out today.

LuxSci and Oiva Health Combine to Form Transatlantic Healthcare Communications Group

February 12, 2026
Pete Wermter

Boston & Helsinki, February 12, 2026 – LuxSci, a provider of secure healthcare communications solutions in the United States, and Oiva Health, a Nordic provider of Digital Care solutions in social and healthcare services, today announced that the companies are joining forces. Backed by Main Capital Partners (“Main”), the combination brings together two complementary platforms and teams, forming a strong transatlantic software group focused on secure healthcare communications.

Founded in 1999, LuxSci is a U.S. provider of HIPAA‑compliant, secure email, marketing, and forms solutions. Its application and infrastructure software enable organizations to securely deliver personalized, sensitive data at scale to support a broad range of healthcare communications and workflows including care coordination, benefits and payments, marketing, wellness communications, after care and ongoing care. Certified by HITRUST for the highest levels of data security, LuxSci serves dozens of healthcare enterprises and hundreds of mid‑market organizations.

Founded in 2010, Oiva Health is a provider of digital care and communications solutions in the Nordics. Headquartered in Finland, with additional offices in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, Oiva Health offers digital care and digital clinic solutions – including digital visits, secure messaging, online scheduling and appointments, and caregiver communications – serving the long-term care, especially elderly care, and occupational healthcare verticals. The company employs approximately 60 people and has recently expanded across the Nordic region, with a growing presence in Norway and Sweden.

The combination of LuxSci and Oiva Health creates a larger, cross Atlantic group with complementary solutions, serving the U.S. and European markets. Together, the companies offer healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers a comprehensive suite of tools to communicate securely and compliantly, spanning communications, workflows, and virtual care delivery.

Daan Visscher, Partner and Co-Head North America at Main, commented: “We are pleased to announce this cross Atlantic transaction, creating an internationally active secure communications player within the healthcare and home care space. The combined product suite enables healthcare organizations to drive much needed efficiency gains in healthcare provision addressing a global trend of rising costs, aging population, and increasing pressure on resources needed to provide high-quality care.”

Mark Leonard, CEO of LuxSci, said, “We are thrilled to join forces with Oiva Health and believe that together we can truly make a difference in healthcare coordination, access, and delivery. We see an exciting path forward with our customers benefiting from an end-to-end, secure and compliant approach to optimizing both healthcare communications and today’s frontline workers, which we need now more than ever.”

Juhana Ojala, CEO at Oiva Health, concluded, “We look forward to this new chapter together with LuxSci. We are very excited about the strong alignment between our solutions, which especially strongly positions us to expand our flagship Digital Care offering to the high-potential U.S. care market – from care coordination to care delivery to in-home and institutional care.”

Nothing contained in this Press Release is intended to project, predict, guarantee, or forecast the future performance of any investment. This Press Release is for information purposes only and is not investment advice or an offer to buy or sell any securities or to invest in any funds or other investment vehicles managed by Main Capital Partners or any other person.

[END OF MESSAGE]

About LuxSci

LuxSci is a U.S.-based provider of secure healthcare communications solutions for the healthcare industry. The company offers secure email, marketing, forms and hosting, delivering HIPAA‑compliant communication solutions that enable organizations to safely manage and transmit sensitive data. Founded in 1999, LuxSci serves more than 1,900 customers across healthcare verticals, including providers, payers, suppliers, and healthcare retail, home care providers, and healthcare systems, as well as organizations operating in other highly regulated industries. LuxSci is HITRUST‑certified with example clients being Athenahealth, 1800 Contacts, Lucerna Health, Eurofins, and Rotech Healthcare, among others.

About Oiva Health

Oiva Health is a Digital Care provider in the Nordics, offering a comprehensive Digital Platform for integrated health and care services to digitalize primary healthcare, social care, hospital healthcare and long-term care services. The company was founded in 2010 and currently employs approximately 60 people in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden serving domestic municipalities, customers and partners, such as City of Helsinki, Keski-Suomi Welfare Region, Länsi-Uusimaa Welfare Region in Finland, and Viborg municipality in Denmark with its Digital Care platform. Annually over 5 million customer contacts are handled digitally through Oiva Health’s Digital Care and Digital Clinic platforms.

About Main Capital Partners

Main Capital Partners is a software investor managing private equity funds active in the Benelux, DACH, the Nordics, France, and the United States with approximately EUR 7 billion in assets under management. Main has over 20 years of experience in strengthening software companies and works closely with the management teams across its portfolio as a strategic partner to achieve profitable growth and create larger outstanding software groups. Main has approximately 95 employees operating out of its offices in The Hague, Düsseldorf, Stockholm, Antwerp, Paris, and an affiliate office in Boston. Main maintains an active portfolio of over 50 software companies. The underlying portfolio employs approximately 15,000 employees. Through its Main Social Institute, Main supports students with grants and scholarships to study IT and Computer Science at Technical Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences.

The sender of this press release is Main Capital Partners.

For more information, please contact:

Main Capital Partners
Sophia Hengelbrok (PR & Communications Specialist)

sophia.hengelbrok@main.nl

+ 31 6 53 70 76 86

Rethinking HIPAA Compliant Email – Not Just a Checkbox

January 20, 2026
Pete Wermter

The compliance-only mentality is outdated.

Let’s be honest—when most healthcare organizations think about HIPAA compliant email, it’s usually in the context of avoiding fines or satisfying checklists. And while yes, compliance is critical, viewing it only through the lens of risk management is a missed opportunity.

In reality, HIPAA compliant email, when implemented properly, is one of the most powerful tools for patient and customer engagement. Why? Because it unlocks the ability to leverage protected health information (PHI) safely, enabling personalized, timely, and high-impact email communication that drives better engagement, satisfaction, and outcomes.

What Makes Email Truly HIPAA Compliant?

As a reminder, HIPAA compliant email requires that protected health information (PHI) is safeguarded both in transit and at rest. That means your email provider must:

Use encryption at all times

Be access-controlled

Include audit logs

Be stored and transmitted in a secure manner

Provide a Business Associate Agreement

Regular email services just don’t cut it. In fact, most consumer or marketing email platforms like Sendgrid or Constant Contact, while great at sending email, are not HIPAA compliant or have limitations when it comes to using PHI in your messages. Even when bolted-on encryption solutions are used, they often lack the flexibility, scalability, and automation needed for safe and effective healthcare email engagement.

LuxSci goes beyond the basics with policy-based encryption, secure TLS, PKI encryption and escrow/secure portal options. LuxSci’s SecureLine™ encryption technology dynamically selects the appropriate encryption method based on recipient capabilities and messaging context and can be configured to enforce secure delivery automatically according to organizational policies. LuxSci also provides the ability to enforce advanced multi-factor authentication. Every message is tracked with full audit trails—no guesswork, no loose ends.

The Real Opportunity – Secure, Personalized Email with PHI

Using PHI to Drive Personalized Messaging
Imagine sending a personalized reminder to a diabetic patient about an upcoming check-up. Or reaching out to new mothers with postnatal care resources tailored to their needs. Or sending automated email workflows to all your members to accelerate and increase new plan enrollments. Or email customer and prospects about a new product upgrade or new service offering. The list goes on. That’s the power of PHI-personalized email—when done securely.

Targeted Segmentation with Sensitive Data
With HIPAA compliant email solutions like LuxSci, you can segment your audience based on real health data with high levels of precision, such as chronic conditions, appointment history, insurance status, health risks, and more, without compromising patient trust or security.

Breaking the One-Size-Fits-All Approach in Healthcare Email
Generic email blasts are over. Modern patients expect personalization. With LuxSci, you can deliver highly targeted, highly secure emails with encrypted content, while staying HIPAA compliant.

Real Business Results from Secure Email

Here’s how secure, personalized email can drive improved results across a range of healthcare communications, including:

Increased Patient Appointments and Follow-ups – Sending encrypted, personalized appointment reminders and follow-up notices can reduce no-shows and boost overall appointment volume.
Boosting Preventative Care with Outreach Campaigns – Preventative campaigns (think flu shots or cancer screenings) sent securely to the right segments can lead to higher response rates, better health outcomes, and a lower cost of care.
Improving Health Plan Enrollments – Targeted email outreach during open enrollment, tailored by eligibility or plan type, and powered by automated workflows leads to higher enrollments and lower call center costs.
Driving Awareness and Sales of New Services or Products – Have a product upgrade offer, new wellness program or telehealth service? Send secure, PHI-informed HIPAA compliant email to the right audience for increased sales and faster adoption.
Optimize Explanation of Benefits Notices – Replace snail mail with email that’s fast, reliable and trackable, ensuring customers are informed and compliance is met.

The Healthcare Marketer’s Secret Weapon: Using PHI Responsibly

In a world moving away from third-party cookies, first-party data is more valuable than ever, and PHI is the most powerful form of it in healthcare. With secure HIPAA compliant email, PHI doesn’t have to be locked away. Marketers can safely use it to understand patient needs and send relevant, timely messages. PHI-driven segmentation lets you build hyper-targeted campaigns that speak to relevant conditions, unique needs and timely topics, increasing open rates, clicks throughs, and campaign conversions.

Meeting the Personalization Demands of Today’s Patients and Customers

HIPAA-compliant email is no longer just about checking a box. It’s about unlocking the full potential of your patient and customer data to drive better engagement, healthier outcomes, and measurable business results.

In closing, below are some final thoughts on how secure, HIPAA compliant email delivers long-term value for your organization and better connections with your patients and customers, including:

- Future-Proofing Healthcare Engagement – Patients expect Amazon-level personalization. HIPAA-compliant tools let you meet those expectations securely.

- Adapting to Data Privacy Regulations Beyond HIPAA – From GDPR to state-level privacy laws, secure communication is no longer optional, it’s foundational.

- Building Trust Through Secure Communication – Each secure, personalized message sent is a trust-building moment with your patients and customers.

Why LuxSci? The Infrastructure Behind the Performance

With LuxSci’s secure email infrastructure and email marketing solutions, healthcare organizations can confidently personalize communication, reach patients more effectively, and fuel growth with PHI-safe segmentation, messaging, and email automation.

LuxSci takes data security and email performance to the next level by offering dedicated cloud infrastructure for each customer, which means your email campaigns aren’t slowed down by other vendors on shared cloud services and your attack footprint is much smaller. In short, you get higher delivery rates and throughput with proven HIPAA compliance and data security.

The future of healthcare engagement is personal, secure, and performance-driven—and it starts with HIPAA compliant email done right.

Reach out today with any questions or to learn more about LuxSci.

FAQs

1. Is HIPAA-compliant email necessary for marketing communications?
Yes—if your emails include or are based on PHI (like appointment reminders, condition-based messaging, or insurance info), you need HIPAA-compliant email and recipient consent to avoid legal risk and preserve patient trust.

2. Can PHI be used in marketing emails under HIPAA?
Yes, with proper consent and secure, HIPAA compliant infrastructure like LuxSci’s, PHI can be safely used in emails for personalized, segmented campaigns.

3. How does LuxSci ensure high email deliverability for healthcare messages?
LuxSci uses dedicated cloud servers for each customer, active email reputation monitoring, and best-practice configurations to ensure high deliverability rates for sensitive emails.

4. Is LuxSci only for marketing teams?
No—LuxSci supports marketing, clinical, operations, and IT teams by enabling secure, compliant email communication across the entire organization.

5. What types of PHI can I use to segment campaigns using LuxSci?
You can segment based on chronic conditions, visit history, insurance status, provider details, age, gender, location, and more—all while staying fully compliant.

Most Popular LuxSci Blog Posts of 2025

December 30, 2025
Pete Wermter

As we close out 2025, healthcare communicators, IT and compliance leaders, and digital marketers face an ever-changing landscape of security threats, regulatory updates, and technology innovations. At LuxSci, we’re committed to helping you with continuous updates and guidance on the future of secure healthcare communications.

In case you missed it, or need a refresh, below are some of our most popular blog posts from 2025. Enjoy!

1. Improve Email Engagement and Marketing Results with Automated Workflows

Automated workflows are transforming how healthcare organizations engage patients and customers — enabling dynamic, event-driven campaigns that easily scale your outreach and keep you HIPAA compliant. In this post, we introduce LuxSci’s Automated Workflows capability for our Secure Marketing healthcare solution. Learn how sequence-based journeys can personalize outreach and optimize engagement with behavior-based triggers that improve campaign performance — without sacrificing data security.

Read the full post: LuxSci Enhances Secure Marketing with Automated Workflows

2. Healthcare Email Threat Readiness Strategies

Email remains a frontline channel for healthcare communications, and a prime target for cyber threats and criminals. This deep-dive into email threat readiness strategies covers essential practices like continuous monitoring, business continuity planning, and workforce training to mitigate email-borne security risks. Whether you’re responsible for clinical systems, marketing, or enterprise IT, this post provides a strategic playbook to strengthen your defenses, while maximizing your results.

Read the full post: Healthcare Email Threat Readiness Strategies

3. HIPAA Compliant Email — 20 Tips in 20 Minutes

For practical guidance you can apply right now, this on-demand webinar distills 20 key tips for HIPAA-compliant email across technical, legal, and operational domains. Whether you’re refining your infrastructure, improving deliverability, or modernizing your data security posture in 2026, this resource is a time-efficient way to elevate your compliance and security.

Read the post and watch the webinar on demand: HIPAA Compliant Email: 20 Tips in 20 Minutes

4. Is SendGrid HIPAA-Compliant? What You Should Know

Choosing the right email provider matters, especially when Protected Health Information (PHI) is at stake. In this post, we examine SendGrid’s capabilities in the context of HIPAA compliance, outline what it takes to send PHI securely, and offer guidance on evaluating third-party services for secure healthcare email and communication needs.

Read the full post: Is SendGrid HIPAA-Compliant?

5. LuxSci Shines in G2 Winter 2026 Reports

Customer feedback matters to LuxSci. In this post, we share the most recent news about LuxSci’s performance in the G2 Winter 2026 Reports, where we earned 20 badges across categories like Email Security, Encryption, Gateway, and HIPAA-Compliant Messaging. These reviews reflect not just product excellence, but trust from real users, which we work hard to build every day!

Read the full post: LuxSci Shines in G2 Winter 2026 Reports

Looking Ahead to 2026

We look forward to providing more information and insights on secure healthcare communications in the coming year, including the latest on HIPAA compliant email, PHI security, healthcare marketing, threat readiness, and personalized engagement. In the meantime, if you’re not already, follow us on LinkedIn below, and we’ll see you here in 2026!

Follow LuxSci on LinkedIn

HIPAA Email Rules: What You Need to Know

October 16, 2024
LuxSci

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is a complicated law that defines the standards for the secure collection, transmission, and storage of protected health information (PHI). When information is stored or exchanged electronically, the HIPAA Security and Privacy Rules require covered entities, i.e., organizations that handle PHI, to safeguard its integrity and confidentiality.

One of the most common ways that PHI is shared electronically is via email, so understanding HIPAA email rules is essential for achieving compliance and protecting sensitive data.

The HIPAA Email Security Rule

It’s important to note that HIPAA does not require the use of any specific technology or vendor to meet its requirements. Generally speaking, the Security Rule requirements for email fall into four categories:

Organizational requirements state the specific functions a covered entity must perform, including implementing policies, procedures and obligations concerning business associate agreements (BAAs).
Administrative requirements relate to employee training, professional development, and management of PHI.
Physical safeguards encompass the security of computer systems, servers, and networks, access to the facility and workstations, data backup and storage, and the destruction of obsolete data and HIPAA email archiving.
Technical safeguards ensure the security of email data transmitted over an open electronic network and the storage of that data.

Let’s move on to discussing some of the main requirements that apply to email and the steps you need to take to secure email accounts that transmit and store PHI.

HIPAA Email Rules: Compliance Checklist

While encryption gets most of the spotlight during discussions on email security, the HIPAA email rules, in contrast, cover a range of behaviors, controls, and services that work together to address eight key areas:

Access
Encryption
Backups and Archival
Defense
Authorization
Reporting
Reviews and Policies
Vendor Management

Let’s look at each aspect of HIPPA’s email rules in greater detail.

1. Access

Access controls help safeguard access to your email accounts and messages. Implementing access controls is essential to keep out unauthorized users and secure your data, with key steps including:

Using strong passwords that cannot be easily guessed or memorized – and changing them frequently, e.g. every 30 days.
Creating different passwords for different sites and applications.
Enabling multi-factor authentication (MFA).
Securing connections to your email service provider using TLS and a VPN.
Blocking unencrypted connections.
Pre-emptively installing software that remotely wipes sensitive email off your mobile device when it is stolen or misplaced.
Logging off from your system when it is not in use and when employees are away from workstations.
Emphasizing opt-out email encryption to minimize breaches resulting from human error.

2. Encryption

Email is inherently insecure and at risk of being read, stolen, intercepted, modified, and forged (repudiated). Covered entities should go beyond the technical safeguards of the HIPAA Security Rule and take steps that exceed what is required to futureproof their communications. Email encryption features to adopt include the following:

The ability to send secure messages to anyone with any email address.
The ability to receive secure messages from anyone.
Implementing measures to prevent the insecure transmission of sensitive data via email.
Exploring message retraction features to retrieve email messages sent to the wrong address.
Avoiding opt-in encryption to satisfy HIPAA Omnibus Rule.

3. Backups and Archival

HIPAA email rules require copies of messages containing PHI to be retained for at least six years. In light of this, organizations must consider the following:

How are email folders backed up?
Are there at least two different backups at two different geographical locations? Additionally, the processes updating these backups should be independent of each other as a measure against backup system failures.
Have you maintained separate, permanent, and searchable archives? While the emails should be tamper-proof, with no way to delete or edit them, they should be easily retrievable to facilitate discovery, comply with audit requests, and support business-critical scenarios.

4. Defense

Cyber threats against healthcare organizations are continually on the increase. Some may be surprised to learn that HIPAA compliant email rules mandate that organizations take steps to defend against possible malicious actors. With this in mind, consider implementing the following technologies:

Server-side inbound email malware and anti-virus scanning to detect phishing messages and malicious links.
Showing the sender’s email address by default on received messages.
Email filtering software to detect fraudulent messages and ensure it uses Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) information to classify messages.
Scanning outbound email.
Scanning workstations for malware, i.e., viruses, ransomware, etc.
Using plain text previews of your messages.

5. Authorization

A critical aspect of HIPAA’s email rules is ensuring that cybercriminals cannot impersonate your company or employees. Configuring your domains with SPF and DKIM is essential to verify your identity as an authorized sender of mail from your domains. Also, ensure that users cannot send messages through your email servers without authentication and encryption.

6. Reporting

Setting accountability standards for email security is essential to establishing and strengthening your HIPAA compliance posture. Important steps to take include:

Creating login audit trails.
Receiving login failure and success alerts.
Auto-blocking known attackers.
Maintaining a log of all sent messages.

7. Reviews and Policies

Humans are the greatest vulnerability to any security and compliance plan, so creating policies and procedures that focus on plugging vulnerabilities and preventing human errors is essential. Strategies for reducing risk include:

Inviting independent third parties to review your email policies and user settings. Fresh, unbiased eyes can discover existing issues quickly.
Preventing devices that connect to sensitive email accounts from connecting to public WiFi networks.
Creating email policies prohibiting users from clicking on links or opening attachments that are not expected or requested.

8. Vendor Management

Most companies do not manage their email in-house, so it’s crucial to thoroughly research and vet whoever will be responsible for your email services. Perform an annual review of your email security and stay on top of emerging cybersecurity threats to take proactive action and for continued compliance with HIPAA email rules.

LuxSci’s secure high-volume email and marketing solutions are designed to help healthcare organizations tackle complicated HIPAA email rules and automate the compliance process. Contact us today to learn more about how our industry-leading HIPAA complaint email services can help you better secure your customer PHI and keep you in compliance.

LuxSci Welcomes Angel Mazariegos as Head of Finance

December 9, 2025
Pete Wermter

LuxSci, a leader in secure healthcare communications and HIPAA compliant email, is pleased to announce the appointment of Angel Marie Mazariegos as the company’s new Head of Finance. With over 25 years of experience in financial management, accounting, and human resources, Angel will play a central role in advancing LuxSci’s operational excellence and supporting the company’s rapid growth in 2026 and beyond.

Angel brings a wealth of expertise to LuxSci, having held senior leadership positions at organizations focused on financial services, language and access services for healthcare, and human resources. In these roles, Angel has led multi-department Finance and HR teams, spearheading critical initiatives, including ERP implementations, streamlined employee onboarding, and financial process optimization.

In her role at LuxSci, Angel will oversee all aspects of the company’s finance operations, including budgeting, forecasting and reporting. Additionally, Angel will manage the company’s HR function, ensuring that LuxSci continues to foster a strong, people-driven culture based on its Secure, Trust, Responsible and Smart company values.

“Angel’s blend of financial and HR leadership makes her an invaluable addition to the LuxSci executive team and a real asset for our people,” said Mark Leonard, CEO of LuxSci. “We look forward to working with Angel to build the high-performing teams that will be critical to our future growth and serving the evolving needs of our customers.”

Angel holds dual MBA degrees in Accounting and Human Resource Management from Cappella University, as well as dual BS degrees in Business Administration (Accounting and CIS Business Systems) from California State University, Los Angeles.

“I am honored to join the LuxSci team at such an exciting time for the company,” said Mazariegos. “I look forward to working with the team and helping build on LuxSci’s reputation for excellence and reliability in secure healthcare communications.”

What is a Secure Email Gateway?

April 2, 2025
Pete Wermter

Email communication is indispensable in today’s fast-paced, digitally-driven healthcare world. Unfortunately, for healthcare organizations, cyber criminals are aware of this too, which is why email-based cyber threats, such as unauthorized access, PHI exposure, phishing and ransomware, remain as prevalent as ever. A Secure Email Gateway can help, providing a security solution that sits between an organization’s email server and the outside world to monitor, filter, and control all incoming and outgoing email traffic.

As healthcare companies learn to recognize and mitigate email security threats, malicious actors grow more sophisticated, developing new ways of breaching organizations’ email security measures. In light of this, healthcare companies must find ways to better safeguard the electronic protected health information (ePHI) within their IT infrastructure, especially for email. Not only will this help maintain operational consistency, delivering high-quality and expedient service to their patients and customers, but it helps them comply with the regulatory guidelines mandated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

A secure email gateway provides an excellent solution to the problem of an evolving email cyber threat landscape, without a healthcare company having to make significant changes to their IT infrastructure. So, with this in mind, this post explores the concept of secure email gateways, how they better safeguard sensitive patient data, and how they support HIPAA compliance efforts.

What Is a Secure Email Gateway?

A secure email gateway is a security tool that filters inbound and outbound email communications to mitigate a variety of email-based cyber threats, including phishing, malware (e.g., ransomware, viruses, etc), PHI exposure, and spam mail.

Effectively providing an additional security layer for your organization’s email accounts, a secure email gateway acts as a checkpoint between its email systems and the internet, enforcing your healthcare company’s security policies and ensuring HIPAA compliance.

How Do Secure Email Gateways Work?

A secure email gateway sits between a company’s email platform (e.g., Microsoft 365, Google Workspace) and external email traffic, scanning messages for potential malicious activity and security policy violations.

When sending an outbound email, the message is encrypted before being passed onto the recipient. This prevents the exposure of any ePHI contained in the email, in the event of its interception. Without the encryption key, the email is rendered unreadable by cyber criminals, ensuring data privacy and regulatory compliance. By the same token, depending on its nature, the secure email gateway may automatically archive the email to help satisfy compliance requirements for message retention – something that will be all the more important when the updated HIPAA Security Rule comes into effect in later 2025.

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Conversely, for incoming traffic, a secure email gateway utilizes filtering tools to identify and quarantine suspicious messages. By preventing potentially malicious messages from reaching employee inboxes, a gateway reduces instances of phishing, malware installation, credential compromise – and any email cyber threat that requires human error or negligence.

When Should You Opt For a Secure Email Gateway?

The key reason to opt for a secure email gateway solution is that you want to enhance your company’s email security without replacing your existing email infrastructure.

A key advantage offered by secure email gateways is that they’re easy to install, manage, and use. This keeps the administrative burden on a company’s IT and operations departments to a minimum while still achieving the key objectives of boosting email security and aiding compliance efforts.

More specifically, installing a secure email gateway can be an easy solution for healthcare care companies looking to quickly achieve HIPAA compliance for email. By simply sitting on top of a company’s existing email service, like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, a secure email gateway can be easier for IT teams to install and maintain, especially for smaller companies and organizations. Additionally, employees won’t require additional training or have to make any adjustments: they can simply keep using their existing email accounts without interruption.

Enhance Your Email Security Posture With Luxsci’s Secure Email Gateway

LuxSci’s Secure Email Gateway can be easily integrated with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or your on-premise email client to better safeguard ePHI and ensure HIPAA compliance – with zero disruption to your current systems, employees, or your quality of service.

Using LuxSci’s proprietary SecureLine encryption technology, our Secure Email Gateway solution automatically encrypts every email, protecting sensitive patient data without the need for explicit employee intervention before sending the message.

Want to know more about how HIPAA compliant email will boost your security and compliance? Contact us to learn more and get started!

Overcoming Barriers To Successful Digital Health Engagement

March 24, 2025
Pete Wermter

Effective patient engagement is increasingly becoming a top priority for many healthcare organizations – and for good reason.

First and foremost, the more a patient or customer is engaged in their healthcare journey, the better their health outcomes and quality of life. With increased communication and engagement, patients are more likely to have potential conditions diagnosed sooner, take preventative measures to prevent illnesses, and educate themselves on ways to manage and improve their health.

However, the benefits don’t end there and aren’t restricted to the patient. Engaged patients pay bills faster, are more open to new products and services, and report higher levels of satisfaction with the companies that contribute to their health and well being. For healthcare providers, payers, and suppliers, this results in higher revenue, more opportunities for growth, and the attainment of long-term organizational goals.

Digital Patient Engagement Is Easier than Ever

Fortunately, advances in technology and their rapid adoption by patients and customers (expedited by the COVID-19 pandemic) have made it easier for healthcare organizations to achieve successful digital interactions and engagement. Healthcare companies have more tools and channels than ever before to help conduct personalized engagement campaigns that meet patients on their terms, making it easier to capture their attention. Secure email takes it even further with the ability to include protected health information in messages to personalize

Despite these advancements, however, there are still several barriers that prevent healthcare companies from engaging with patients and reaping the associated benefits. Fortunately, each barrier can be overcome to help patients and customers feel more included and instrumental in their healthcare journeys.

With this in mind, this post discusses the main barriers to digital patient engagement and how to overcome them to drive better healthcare outcomes for your patients and growth for your organization.

The Main Barriers To Digital Health Engagement

The four key barriers to digital health engagement that we’ll explore in this post are as follows:

1. Low Health Literacy

1. Privacy And Security Concerns

1. Age And Cultural Differences

1. Lack Of Personalization

Let’s review each barrier in turn, while offering potential solutions that will contribute to greater digital health patient engagement for your healthcare organization.

Low Health Literacy

The first barrier to successful digital health patient engagement is your patients having insufficient health or medical knowledge. Healthcare is laden with terminology, including medical conditions, pharmaceuticals, the human anatomy, and many patients simply don’t understand enough to get more involved with their healthcare journey. Worse still, few patients will admit they don’t understand, as people are often embarrassed at their lack of knowledge.

Consequently, if your digital health patient engagement campaigns are heavy with medical jargon and lack personalization, patients won’t act on the information to drive better outcomes.

Solution: Create Educational Health Content

Develop simple educational resources for your patients that apply to their unique needs and condition. This will help them understand their state of health and make better sense of subsequent communications they’ll receive from you and their other healthcare providers.

This educational content could be in the form of periodic email newsletters, giving you a great reason to keep in touch with your patients. Alternatively, they could take the form of blog posts or articles on a patient portal, which could be supported by an email marketing campaign to let patients know about the article. In helping to increase your patients’ health literacy, you offer additional value as a healthcare provider, payer or supplier.

Additionally, keep the medical jargon in your email communications and other patient engagement channels to a minimum. Empathize with the fact that some patients won’t understand as much as others when it comes to healthcare provision and explain things as plainly as possible.

Data Privacy And Security Concerns

Unfortunately, due to its sensitivity and critical nature patient data, i.e., protected health information (PHI) is highly prized by cybercriminals. Subsequently, there have been many high-profile healthcare breaches, such as the Change Healthcare breach, in early 2024, which affected 100 million individuals, that make patients increasingly wary about sharing health-related information via email, text, or other digital communication channels.

That said, their wary attitude is the right one to adopt, but not at the expense of enhancing engagement and improving their health outcomes.

Solution: Invest In HIPAA Compliant Communication Tools

Ensure that the digital tools you use to engage with patients possess the security features required for HIPAA compliance. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) provides a series of guidelines that healthcare organizations must comply with to best safeguard PHI. Consequently, solutions that promote their commitment to HIPAA compliance, such as LuxSci, will understand the privacy, security, and regulatory needs of healthcare companies and have developed their tools accordingly.

Most importantly, a HIPAA compliant vendor will sign a Business Associates Agreement (BAA), the legal documentation that outlines your respective responsibilities regarding the protection of PHI. Safe in the knowledge that the patient data under your care is secure, you can concentrate your efforts on personalizing your digital communication campaigns for maximum effect.

Age And Cultural Differences

Ineffective patient engagement efforts (or a complete lack of engagement, altogether) can reinforce cliches about the use of digital tools within particular patient groups. The reality, however, is that many healthcare organizations don’t account for age differences and channel preferences in their patient engagement strategies.

Subsequently, if you only engage with patients on a single communication channel, you risk alienating others because it’s not their medium of choice.

Solution: Adopt a Multi-Channel Engagement Strategy

Instead of focusing on one communication medium, diversify your approach and adopt a multi-channel engagement strategy. This could encompass email, SMS, and phone outreach, for instance. This covers the more proverbial bases and gives you a chance to engage with patients on their preferred terms.

Lack Of Personalization

One of the main reasons that healthcare organizations fail to engage with their patients is that they adopt a “one-size-fits-all” approach, attempting to craft communications that appeal to as many people as possible. Unfortunately, this has the opposite of the desired approach, not connecting anyone in particular and engaging few patients as a result.

Solution: Personalize Your Patient Engagement Campaigns with PHI

With a HIPAA compliant solution, you can use PHI to personalize patient engagement, leveraging their health data to craft messaging that reflects their specific condition, needs, and where they are along their healthcare journey. PHI also can be used to segment patients into subgroups, grouping them by specific commonalities such as age, gender, health condition, and lifestyle factors.

Successful Digital Health Patient Engagement with LuxSci

With more than 20 years of experience in delivering secure digital healthcare communication solutions to some of the world’s leading healthcare providers, payers and suppliers, LuxSci is a trusted partner for organizations looking to boost their patient engagement efforts, while protecting patient data and remaining compliant at all times.

LuxSci’s suite of HIPAA compliant solutions include:

- Secure Email: HIPAA compliant email solutions for executing highly scalable, high volume email campaigns that include PHI – millions of emails per month.

- Secure Forms: Securely and efficiently collect and store ePHI without compromising security or compliance – for onboarding new patients and customers and gathering intelligence for personalization.

- Secure Marketing: proactively reach your patients and customers with HIPAA compliant email marketing campaigns for increased engagement, lead generation and sales.

- Secure Text Messaging: enable access to ePHI and other sensitive information directly to mobile devices via regular SMS text messages.

Interested in discovering more about LuxSci can help you upgrade your cybersecurity posture for PHI and ensure HIPAA compliance? Contact us today!