status.health

Introducing the status.health Blog

Your legal team just killed another product feature. The dating app that wanted STI verification badges dropped the project when they calculated HIPAA compliance costs. The insurance company exploring wellness discounts discovered that storing vaccination records meant accepting breach liability they couldn’t price. The clinical trial struggling with protocol adherence gave up on automated verification because every solution required becoming a covered entity.

The state of health verification in 2025 is riddled with uncomfortable decisions. Businesses that touch health data are forced to accept existential risk, very often early projects focused on health data die in legal review, and almost all health data currently requires choosing between utility and liability.

We built status.health to end the uncomfortable decisions. Our infrastructure enables health verification through mathematical proofs instead of data custody. How it works: your business requests health data from a user, we then send a verification request for the given health action, once the user approves, our zero-knowledge architecture ensures you get the data you need while never touching, storing, or transmitting PII or PHI.

The Problem With Health Data

Health information carries unique regulatory weight. HIPAA violations start at $100 per record and scale to $50,000 per incident. California’s medical privacy act adds statutory damages. GDPR classifies health data as special category with maximum penalties. A single breach doesn’t just cost money; it triggers congressional inquiries, destroys consumer trust, and creates perpetual liability.

Traditional verification architectures guarantee this outcome because they all follow the same pattern: receive health data, store it somewhere, then try to protect it. Each step in this chain creates new vulnerabilities and compliance requirements. Security teams implement elaborate controls while knowing that breaches remain a matter of when, not if.

The market response has been predictable: businesses simply avoid health data entirely. They abandon promising features, delay product launches, and leave valuable use cases unimplemented because the compliance costs and breach risks make the math impossible.

Zero Data Architecture

status.health takes a fundamentally different approach. All health data processing happens on the user’s device, inside hardware-isolated environments called Trusted Execution Environments. These TEEs create processor-level isolation that protects data even if the device’s operating system is compromised. The only thing that leaves the device is a mathematical signature that confirms the verification result without revealing any underlying health information.

We support three ways for users to verify their health data, depending on what’s most convenient for them. They can point their camera at their health portal and our machine vision processes it in real-time without ever saving screenshots. They can connect directly to health APIs like Epic or Apple Health, where data flows into isolated memory for immediate processing then deletion. Or they can upload documents that get processed entirely on their device. Regardless of method, your business receives a cryptographic proof that the health criteria you specified were met.

Our approach means privacy guarantees are rooted in math. We literally cannot see your users’ health information because the only thing that leaves their devices is a zero-knowledge proof. There’s nothing for us, or anyone else, to breach because we never possess the data in the first place. This means we and you sidestep regulatory scope entirely by never handling protected health information; exceeding data protection requirements as a first principle.

What This Blog Will Cover

This blog will share the technical details behind our approach. We’ll explain how TEEs work, dive into zero-knowledge proof systems, and discuss the real engineering challenges of running complex computations in hardware-constrained environments. CTOs and security teams need depth, not marketing fluff, and that’s what we’ll deliver through practical integration guides with real code samples. You’ll see exactly how to implement health verification without touching health data, with architecture diagrams that trace data flow from user devices to verification outcomes. We’ll also be transparent about performance tradeoffs because privacy guarantees do come with costs that affect user experience.

Beyond the technical implementation, we’ll explore how different industries can use this technology. Dating apps can finally offer STI verification without becoming HIPAA covered entities. Insurance companies can verify wellness activities for discounts without storing medical records. Employers can check vaccination status without turning HR into a healthcare data processor. Each use case becomes possible when you remove data custody from the equation, and we’ll share product updates that explain our technical decisions as we build. When we hit limitations or discover tradeoffs, we’ll document them honestly because no technology is perfect, and pretending otherwise helps no one.

Building the Future of Health Verification

The enterprise market needs a better way to handle health verification. Too many good ideas die in legal review, useful features get abandoned, and companies that want to help their users with health-related services can’t justify the risk. The demand exists but remains blocked by liability concerns. That’s why we’re building status.health: infrastructure that lets businesses verify health information without ever touching it. No data means no breaches, and no breaches means no liability. The math really is that simple.

Health Facts

At the end of each post, we’ll add a helpful health fact that could benefit from privacy-preserving verification. These facts highlight real health actions that matter for individuals and businesses, from STI testing intervals to vaccination schedules. Each represents a verification use case where our zero-knowledge infrastructure could enable better health outcomes without compromising privacy.

Welcome to the status.health blog.

— s.h

Health fact: "Skin cancer screening annually for high-risk individuals catches melanoma at stage 1 in 85% of cases, when 5-year survival exceeds 99%."