mHealth wearables and smartphone health tracking apps: A changing privacy landscape

Abstract

The use of digital health technologies is changing the ways people monitor and manage their health and well-being. There is increasing interest in using wearables and smartphone health apps to collect health-related data, a domain within digital health referred to as mHealth. Wearables and health apps can continuously monitor metrics such as physical activity, sleep, and heart rate, to name a few. These mHealth data can supplement the measures taken by healthcare professionals during regular doctor’s visits, with mHealth having the advantage of a much greater frequency of collection. But what are the privacy considerations with mHealth? This paper explores global data privacy protections, enumerates principles to guide regulations, discusses the tension between anonymity and data utility, and proposes ways to improve how we as a society talk about and safeguard data privacy. We include brief discussions about inadvertent or unintended consequences of digital data collection and the trade-off between privacy and public health interests, such as is illustrated by COVID-19 contract tracing apps. This paper concludes by offering suggestions for consideration about improving privacy and confidentiality notices.