Consented data: the key to unlocking trust in healthcare

Growing healthcare and wellness organizations are under increasing pressure to deliver connected, trustworthy experiences to patients and consumers. Yet one critical barrier often holds them back: fragmented consent and preference data.

Patient information lives in one platform, communication preferences in another, and compliance records in yet another. With data scattered across systems, it becomes difficult to confidently point to the data your organization can actually use.

When that answer is unclear, digital communications stall, compliance risk rises, and innovative projects hit delays before they even begin. For growing companies already trying to stretch limited IT and compliance resources in an industry as highly regulated as anything touching health and wellness is, the effects of this put growth in doubt.

But integrated consent and preference management addresses these issues by synchronizing patient and consumer consent and preferences choices across your entire data ecosystem—from EHRs to CRMs to marketing platforms—giving every team a single source of truth. With this in place, organizations can turn data into trusted engagement to drive smarter outreach, innovate with confidence, and build a trusted brand.

The conundrum of health data

Your organization–whether a provider or a health and wellness startup, such as a fitness app, wearable, or a digital tracker–manages a wide variety of data, from sensitive patient or member records in EHRs to communication choices stored in portals, CRMs, and call centers. All of this data comes with its own rules and risks, and in many cases, these two data ecosystems rarely communicate.

But systems across these distinct ecosystems each store sensitive data, and many are also touchpoints to gather user choices. This fuels a chaotic data environment where systems fail to communicate those choices across your tech stack or do not even offer users the chance to set their consent and communication preferences at all.

The result is a fractured view of patients and their preferences that most tech stacks in the health and wellness industries have no way to solve. One team may interpret a consent signal as approval for outreach, while another views the same record with uncertainty. This lack of clarity slows digital engagement and creates unnecessary risk when deciding who to engage and how to engage them.

In order to effectively capture and connect user choices, your organization must purposely integrate consent across your user journey and tech stack. If you treat consent as an afterthought or a static line item on a check list, you lose the ability to coordinate communications with confidence and in compliance. That means data fragmentation fundamentally threatens to limit user trust in your business.

What’s at stake for health & wellness organizations

The consequences of fragmented consent are wide-ranging. From a compliance perspective, organizations risk violating privacy frameworks if patient and consumer choices aren’t reflected downstream throughout your data stack. These aren’t just operational slip-ups, they’re serious liabilities that can trigger audits, fines, and brand damage.

Operationally, digital engagement slows to a crawl. Without a reliable view of patient preferences, organizations hesitate to launch new outreach programs, delaying communication and undermining the very digital initiatives that are supposed to make care more seamless. In some cases, patients may even miss essential updates because of an organization’s uncertainty about whether you can contact them.

Overall, fragmented consent erodes patient and consumer trust in an industry where trust is everything. Duplicate messages, irrelevant offers, or conflicting communications all contribute to a sense that an organization is either not truly listening or not properly handling your data. Over time, this diminishes customer satisfaction and loyalty, which can cut brand growth short in critical moments.

Consent as a foundation for better digital experiences

Rather than viewing consent as a static record or compliance burden, health and wellness leaders should reframe it as an enabler of digital transformation. With a unified and automated consent and preference layer in place to automate syncs between systems and enforce user choices, organizations gain the clarity and confidence they need to deliver the kind of experiences that drive trust.

Consent can provide your organization with a more solid data foundation to build upon, allowing teams to move quickly without fear of regulatory missteps by providing the assurance that every communication — whether a reminder, an educational message, or a digital engagement initiative — is grounded in the patient’s own stated preferences. That clarity reduces manual reviews, accelerates approvals, and expands outreach possibilities without risking noncompliance or user trust.

Equally important, strong consent management enhances every patient interaction. When outreach is consistent, transparent, and respectful of preferences, patients feel heard and respected. That builds the kind of trust that is foundational to health and healthcare brands, where relationships are not just transactional but deeply personal.

In this way, compliance doesn’t just reduce risk — it actively supports growth by creating the conditions for better digital experiences and stronger brand credibility.

How Transcend helps

Transcend provides the automated solutions health and wellness organizations need to unify, automate, and operationalize consent and preference management across their systems. With Transcend, you can:

• Orchestrate consent across all systems: Keep patient preferences synchronized across EHRs, portals, CRMs, and engagement platforms so user choices are reflected throughout your data stack.
• Centralize user preferences in real time: When a patient updates their choices on a website, call center, or portal, those changes propagate instantly across your stack.
• Automate compliance enforcement: From GDPR to emerging state privacy laws, Transcend enforces guardrails at the data layer — reducing manual overhead.
• Build lasting user trust: Transcend’s ability to capture, store, and enforce user consent and preference choices creates a better user experience and a foundation of trust for your organization
• Drive customer engagement and LTV: Data privacy investments drive a median ROI of 1.6x due to factors such as increased user engagement and loyalty, with 82% of orgs reporting positive ROI, per Cisco’s 2025 Privacy Benchmark Study.

For growing healthcare organizations, patient trust is non-negotiable. By unifying consent and preference data, you can simultaneously reduce risk and modernize your digital engagement, giving patients the confidence to stay connected and loyal to your brand.