Tool Overview:
Protenus

About Protenus

Protenus is a healthcare compliance analytics platform founded in 2014 that focuses on two main areas: patient privacy monitoring and drug diversion surveillance. The platform uses artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to help healthcare organizations detect potential privacy violations and drug diversion incidents within their systems.

What does Protenus do?

The platform's patient privacy monitoring component audits up to 100% of system accesses related to patient data, aiming to identify inappropriate access to medical records and potential HIPAA violations. It claims to achieve up to a 96% accuracy rate in distinguishing between proper and improper system accesses, with users reporting approximately 70% time savings compared to legacy monitoring systems.

The drug diversion surveillance solution monitors medication handling throughout healthcare facilities to identify potential theft or misuse of controlled substances. The system analyzes patterns in medication dispensing, administration, and waste documentation to detect anomalous behavior that might indicate drug diversion. Key metrics tracked include medication handling delays, unaccounted-for controlled substances, and documentation manipulation.

What makes Protenus different?

A distinguishing characteristic of Protenus is its use of artificial intelligence to analyze behavioral patterns and provide context-aware monitoring. Rather than solely relying on rule-based alerting, the platform examines user behavior patterns and relationships between healthcare workers to identify potential compliance issues. The system can monitor workforce automation and enables peer-to-peer collaboration for compliance strengthening.

The platform is designed to reduce false positives through machine learning models that continuously improve detection accuracy. According to their documentation, organizations can reduce detection time by over 80% compared to traditional methods, with drug diversion typically detected within 50 days on average. This approach aims to address the challenge that an estimated 90% of diversion events typically go unnoticed in healthcare settings.

Use cases and industries

Protenus serves healthcare organizations including hospitals, health systems, and other medical facilities that handle protected health information and controlled substances. The platform supports compliance with various regulations, including HIPAA privacy requirements and DEA controlled substance regulations.

The system can be particularly relevant for organizations dealing with workforce challenges, such as those employing travel nurses or experiencing staffing shortages, as it helps maintain compliance monitoring despite changes in personnel. Professional services are available to help organizations implement best practices and maintain compliance programs, though these services require additional investment beyond the base platform.

Several limitations should be noted. The platform requires significant setup and configuration to align with an organization's specific workflows and compliance requirements. Additionally, while it can detect potential issues, human investigation is still needed to validate and act on the system's findings. The effectiveness of the tool also depends heavily on the quality and completeness of data from connected systems.