Medical Forms & Sensitive Fields
Medical Forms and Sensitive Fields
💡 Watchtower provides two ways to protect confidential information collected through Forms: Medical Forms, which protect an entire form response, and Sensitive Fields, which protect individual questions within any form.
Use Medical Forms when the complete response should be treated as medical or protected information. Use Sensitive Fields when a general operational form contains only one or more confidential answers, such as a patient name, contact information, signature, or other personal details.
Important: These features support your agency's privacy and security practices, but your agency remains responsible for determining its legal and regulatory obligations, including whether HIPAA or another privacy framework applies.
Medical Forms
Medical Forms are designed for workflows where the entire submitted response contains protected medical information. Examples may include patient care records, treatment documentation, exposure reports, or employee medical records.
Medical Forms appear separately under Operations → Forms & Docs → Medical Forms.
Creating a Medical Form
To create a Medical Form:
- Open Operations → Forms & Docs → Medical Forms.
- Select the + button in the upper-right corner.
- Add a form name, tags, audience, and the questions you would like to ask.
- Select Create Form.
Only Admins can create new forms. The Medical Forms module must be enabled for your agency. Contact Watchtower Support if Medical Forms are not available in your account.
Who Can View Medical Form Responses?
Medical Form access applies to the whole response, not only selected questions.
Role | Medical Form response access |
|---|---|
Read Only | Can view all responses within their agency |
User | Can view only responses they submitted |
Dispatcher | Can view all responses within their agency |
Supervisor | Can view all responses within their agency |
Admin | Can view all responses within their agency |
Medical Form answers are not included in notification emails or text messages. Authorized users must sign in to Watchtower to view the response.
Business Associate Agreements
If your agency is subject to HIPAA and requires a Business Associate Agreement (BAA), an Admin can request one from the agency profile. Your agency should consult its legal or compliance advisor to determine whether a BAA is required.
Sensitive Fields
Sensitive Fields protect an individual question within a form. They are useful when most of a form is operational information, but one or more answers require additional protection.
Common examples include:
- Patient health information (PHI)
- Personally identifiable information (PII)
- Names and contact details
- Signatures
- Medical notes
- Confidential addresses or locations
Marking a Question as Sensitive
To protect a question:
- Open the form in the Form Builder.
- Find the question you want to protect.
- Select the lock icon in the question's action bar.
- Review the warning and type sensitive to confirm.
- Save the form.
A lock icon appears beside protected questions when users submit or review the form.
⚠️ This action cannot be undone. Once a question is marked as Sensitive, it cannot be changed back. Existing answers to that question are field level encrypted in the background.
Who Can View Sensitive Answers?
Role | Sensitive answer access |
|---|---|
Read Only | Can view sensitive answers on all responses within their agency |
User | Can view sensitive answers only on responses they submitted |
Dispatcher | Can view sensitive answers on all responses within their agency |
Supervisor | Can view sensitive answers on all responses within their agency |
Admin | Can view sensitive answers on all responses within their agency |
Users who can access another person's general form response may still see its non-sensitive answers, but its Sensitive Fields are hidden. Sensitive answers are decrypted only when an authorized user views the response inside Watchtower.
How Sensitive Answers Are Protected
Sensitive answers receive additional application-level encryption on top of Watchtower's standard encryption at rest. They are also kept out of areas where the value could be copied, distributed, or analyzed outside the original response:
- Response summaries display [Sensitive] instead of the answer.
- CSV exports and PDF reports redact the answer.
- Email and text notifications do not expose the answer.
- Sensitive questions cannot be used in trend reports.
- Sensitive answers are excluded from search indexing.
- Sensitive questions cannot be selected as Summary Answers.
- Sensitive questions cannot be connected to Pulse status automations.
If a question is currently a Summary Answer or has an active Pulse connection, remove that configuration before marking it as Sensitive.
Which Option Should I Use?
Scenario | Recommended option |
|---|---|
The entire form is a patient or medical record | Medical Form |
A general incident form asks for a patient's name | Sensitive Field |
A maintenance form includes an employee signature | Sensitive Field |
The complete response should only be available to the submitter and authorized operational roles | Medical Form |
Only selected answers need encryption and redaction | Sensitive Fields |
Medical Forms and Sensitive Fields can be used together when an individual question within a Medical Form requires the additional field-level encryption and redaction behavior.
Need Help?
If you need Medical Forms enabled, need assistance requesting a BAA, or are unsure how to configure Sensitive Fields, contact Watchtower Support.
Updated on: 02/09/2026
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