# Redact health status

> Redact statements about a person's health, disability, or medical status from free text.

Canonical: https://bitbanger.in/entities/health-status
Last updated: 2026-10-27

Category: Special-category data · Entity type: `special.health_status`

Health status is broader than a diagnosis: it covers disability, pregnancy, sickness absence, and fitness for work. All of it is special-category data under GDPR Article 9.

## How Redactly detects health status

- Detected by the model from free-text statements rather than any pattern.
- Covers status descriptions that never name a condition.
- Reported separately from healthcare.condition so you can treat each as you need to.

## Why redact health status?

Article 9 data requires an explicit legal basis, so an accidental disclosure is a compliance event, not just a data incident.

## Example request

```bash
curl -X POST https://api.bitbanger.in/v1/redact \
  -H "X-API-Key: rdct_your_key_here" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text": "Employee is on long-term sick leave following surgery.", "style": "replace"}'
```

## FAQ

**Does Redactly redact health status automatically?**

Yes. Send text to the API and every detected type is redacted, including health status. To redact only this type, pass the value special.health_status in the entities filter. No training or configuration is required.

**What happens to health status after redaction?**

With style set to replace, each match becomes [special.health_status] — the entity type in square brackets. Setting style to mask replaces every character with a block character, and remove deletes the span entirely.

## Related entity types

- [Medical conditions](https://bitbanger.in/entities/condition) — Redact diagnoses and medical conditions from clinical notes, claim narratives, and support transcripts.
- [Medications](https://bitbanger.in/entities/medication) — Redact drug names and prescriptions from clinical text and support transcripts.
- [Religious beliefs](https://bitbanger.in/entities/religion) — Redact references to religious belief or affiliation from HR records, applications, and free text.

Try it on your own text: https://bitbanger.in/entities/health-status