9NOVEMBER 2020individual level. At the same time, this opportunity goes hand-in-hand with privacy regulations and fostering member trust. Protecting patient privacy is critical: our health data is just about as personal as it gets, but ensuring the right people have easy access to information can literally mean life or death. One of Oscar's core company values is remembering that what we're doing is a big dealwe're solving real world problems that can change peoples' actual lives. As the pandemic has evolved, Oscar has quickly scaled technology to meet member needs, such as by developing a COVID-19 risk assessment survey. We leverage the data from this survey to help guide at-risk members to the right virtual or in-person care, and support healthy members in getting care like prescriptions at home to help flatten the curve. Naturally, these changes have come with shifting regulations and security practices. One way we've built our foundational technology to be adaptive to change is through our approach to identity and access management ("IAM"). We design our access controls so that Oscar Care Teams only have access to member information when it's essential to their role. Part of the way we enable this is by assigning members dedicated Care Teams, including a few designated Care Guides and a nurse, and limiting access to member information to those teams. We've taken a similar approach to the launch of our new Virtual Primary Care product. A team-based approach facilitates efficient ongoing care delivery and relationships while protecting patient privacy. In our technology, we use a combination of well-understood open source and commercial solutions that we chose because they align with our goals to be adaptive.Establishing Data Governance across Varied Systems and RegulationsAs I mentioned earlier, U.S. healthcare regulations can vary at the hyper-local level. There's added complexity depending on what sector your company is infrom insurers like Oscar to providers and vendorsand what type of care is being delivered. Take the example of Oregon: a recent report found that there are over 2,000 regulations that apply to acute care in patient hospitals in the state. Data governance is a field that has increased in prominence over the past several years, and one that has exciting potential for healthcare. Governance enables security professionals to speak the same language as other key stakeholders both internally and externally, across product types and markets. We're embracing this area at Oscar, creating dedicated headcount and work streams within the Security Team. As we continue to expand our lines of business and strategic partnerships, having a team that is dedicated to taxonomy will be critical to getting partners up-to-speed more quickly and scaling across the organization. Scaling Privacy Renewals along with User NeedsAs transformation makes its way across sectors of healthcare and the U.S. as a whole, scalable consistent processes for renewed privacy and identity management will be essential. Oscar continues to expand to new markets each year, and we plan to significantly grow our geographic footprint for the fourth year in a row in 2021, pending regulatory approval. Expansions bring new partnerships, such as with hospital systems and pharmacies, that is critical to our success in each market. They also bring new requirements for how we handle member information. Whether we're on-boarding a new provider partner or vetting a new tool like SMS messaging, we conduct third-party risk assessments on our stakeholders who may touch member data. We layer assessments on top of other security practices like access recertification and multi-factor authentication to ensure that we remain a trustworthy custodian of our members' data as they receive care. Healthcare is literally and figuratively a lifelong service. True innovation requires thinking about the lifelong cycle of patient experiences and data, and security professionals play a key role in understanding and predicting the risks at each phase of that lifecycle. As our industry changes at the current rapid pace, we work to create repeatable, efficient processes that can be both agile to unexpected change and scalable with growth. We've built our own full-stack technology platform around the consumer journey, and related security processes and protocols each step of the wayHugh Tower-Pierce
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