What is the benefit of accepting the electronic medical record (EMR) consent in order to health data into Pregnancy Journey?
Pregnancy is an incredible physical process, but it is a historically understudied area of clinical research. Sema4 is looking to better understand why some women develop complications during pregnancy, and some women do not. Our research focuses on developing predictive models that can identify women who are high risk early in their pregnancy, so they can receive the best possible care. If you connect your health records to your Sema4 account, it will be used to validate our predictive models for conditions like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes mellitus, and maternal mortality.
Connecting your health data to your Sema4 account also allows you to take advantage of Pregnancy Journey’s vital signs feature. This feature allows you to track your key pregnancy vitals, like heart rate, blood pressure, and gestational weight gain throughout the course of your pregnancy via easily accessible graphs.
How does Pregnancy Journey relate to the "My Health" feature?
We want the Sema4 patient portal to be a useful resource for patients. Pregnancy Journey and My Health can both provide you with additional value in the patient portal apart from the other test-related features it includes.
The focus of My Health is to give you easy access to your health information from the different institutions where you receive care (healthcare providers, labs, pharmacies) and allow you to monitor them over time. Please check out our My Health FAQs if you have other questions on this feature.
Pregnancy Journey aims to give you a one-stop pregnancy and postpartum resource to use throughout and after your pregnancy.
How do I disconnect health data sources from Pregnancy Journey? How do I opt out of sharing my health information entirely?
You are in charge of your information, and you can decide to opt out of sharing your health records with Sema4 at any time. When you opt out of sharing this data, we delete all data that can be identified as yours from our system. However, any de-identified data will remain in our system and will continue to be used for research because we are not able to “re-identify” this information and link it back to you.
You can opt out of sharing your health information at any time by going to the Consents section under your Account Settings page and clicking ‘Edit.'
Please note that if you have created a separate Human API account, Human API will still have access to your health information.
If you do not want Human API to continue to access your information, you should disconnect your health records as a source before you opt out of sharing your information. To do this, go to the health data menu (accessed via the heart icon) and click on Manage Sources. From there, you will need to disconnect each source individually.
If you have a separate Human API account, you will need to contact Human API directly about removing your data from their databases.
To learn more about Human API and their privacy policies, please see our FAQs on Human API.
How does Sema4 use this data?
Sema4 is dedicated to protecting your privacy. All of your healthcare and genetic information received through or shared with Sema4 is encrypted and fully HIPAA-compliant, and Sema4 will only use your information with your consent. Please refer to Sema4’s Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for more information, available at the link.
If you have provided your consent, your information may be used in our research. You can opt out of having your health data included in the at any time by e-mailing privacy@sema4.com . However, any de-identified information that has already been entered into our research databases will remain in our databases because we are not able to “re-identify” this information and link it back to you.
How does Sema4 use the due date information that I provide?
Sema4 uses your due date to send you to Pregnancy Journey content that is relevant to where you are in your pregnancy. For example, if your due date indicates that you are due in 7 months (28 weeks), you will start seeing content that relates to the third month of pregnancy (12 weeks).
Sema4 may also use your due date to determine if you are eligible to participate in any of the pregnancy-related studies or clinical trials that are part of our research program.
How frequently will I receive emails from Sema4 about my health data from Pregnancy Journey?
You will receive emails about your health data in your patient portal once your health information becomes available for viewing on the timeline. This will occur when:
- You have recently connected a new data source and your health information becomes available and/or
- You have had a recent visit with your provider and new record update is available.
We respect your time and your inbox. Sema4 will send a maximum of one health data-related email every 48 hours, even if health data becomes available multiple times within that timeframe.
How frequently will my vital charts update once I have health data sources connected through Pregnancy Journey?
The data sources you choose to connect through Pregnancy Journey automatically update after each new appointment where these vitals are measured. Please note that there may be a slight delay in fetching and displaying new health information after a recent visit. This information will also be accessible through the My Health feature, and will be updated at the same cadence as is done for Pregnancy Journey.
What are the different statuses of health data sources and what do they mean?
Your health data may display several different statuses, which are: Connected, Syncing, Unavailable, or Action Required.
- Connected: if a source is connected, it means that we have successfully connected and retrieved all available health information from this source.
- Syncing: If a source is syncing, it means that we are attempting to retrieve and pull your health data. In the case that your data is indeed available and able for retrieval, the source will become "connected." In the case that we are unable to retrieve data for some reason, the source status will become "unavailable" or "action required".
- Unavailable: If a source is unavailable, it means that we are having issues obtaining your health information from this source. A source may display as unavailable if you are trying to access records from an account that is no longer active. If you believe that your account should be active, please contact your healthcare provider directly.
- Action Required: If a source has "action required," it usually means that there is action required with a healthcare institution, lab, or pharmacy account connected through Human API. The most frequent reason that a source displays as “action required” is that your login details (username and/or password) for that institution have expired and need to be updated. After updating your log in details through your healthcare institution, lab, or pharmacy, please reconnect your healthcare account through Human API. A source may also display as "action required" if there are no records available for you from this institution.
What if the health information on my timeline is incorrect?
The health information pulled into your Sema4 account through Mount Sinai and/or Human API directly reflects your records as they were written in your original provider’s office. If you have a concern about a specific record, we recommend reaching out to that specific provider to have it fixed.