Wearable devices in healthcare: Privacy and information security issues

Abstract

Background: Mobile health has provided new and exciting ways for patients to partake in their healthcare. Wearable devices are designed to collect the user’s health data, which can be analysed to provide information about the user’s health status. However, little research has been conducted that addresses privacy and information security issues of these devices. Objective: To investigate the privacy and information security issues to which users are exposed when using wearable health devices. Method: The study used a cross-sectional survey approach to collect data from a convenience sample of 106 respondents. Results: Half of the respondents did not understand the need to protect health information. There also appeared to be a general lack of awareness among respondents about the information security issues surrounding their data collected by wearable devices. Conclusion: Users were not knowledgeable about the privacy risks that their data are exposed to or how these data are protected once collected. Implications: Users of wearable devices that collect personal information about health need to be educated about privacy and information security issues to which they are exposed when using these devices.

Privacy in wearable health devices: How does POPIA measure up?

“…Software and hardware developments in the wearables platform continue to grow due to the increased adoption of these devices for health monitoring purposes (Hutton et al, 2018). Some of the functions currently provided by wearables include step counting, sleep tracking, heart rate monitoring, workout duration and calories burnt (Cilliers, 2019).…”

“…Wearable health devices are able to collect data from the user in real-time, process the data immediately and provide instant feedback to the user (Ching & Singh, 2016). Examples of data that can be collected include location -GPS; food consumedlogged manually; activity/movements and sleep patternsaccelerometers, pedometer and altimeters; muscle function and coordinationpressure sensors; heart rate, blood pressureheart rate sensors (Apple Inc, 2019;Charara, 2018;Cilliers, 2019;Fitbit, 2018;Genuth, 2015;Piwek, Ellis, Andrews, & Joinson, 2016). The wearable health devices also allow the user to share their information to social media or other users e.g.…”

“…exercise routines, real-time mapped running routes and exercise challenges (Vitak, Liao, Kumar, Zimmer, & Kritikos, 2018). These devices continually monitor human activity for purposes of improving the efficiency, productivity and health management of the user (Cilliers, 2019). The wearable devices collect information such as demographic information of the user, health information and Personally Identifying Information (PII).…”

“…However, due to limited storage and processing power of wearable health devices, the device must transmit the data collected to the device manufacturer for processing and long term storage (Cilliers, 2019). The service provider also shares the information collected to partner companies for purposes of processing, marketing or other business interests of the device manufacturer (Ching & Singh, 2016;Hutton et al, 2018).…”

“…In South Africa the Protection of Personally Identifiable Information Act (POPIA) is the most applicable Act to protect the privacy of wearable health device users. However, the protection of the collected user data is the responsibility of the device manufacturer who own the data and is not located in South Africa (Cilliers, 2019;Hutton et al, 2018). The device manufacturer, in this study Apple and FitBit, do provide privacy policy statements on their website that explains how the privacy of the user is managed.…”