Previously submitted to: JMIR mHealth and uHealth (no longer under consideration since Nov 19, 2021)
Date Submitted: May 21, 2018
Open Peer Review Period: May 21, 2018 - Jul 16, 2018
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Privacy of mHealth Systems: A national survey on user perspectives
Background:
Personal electronic health devices, such as fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, blood glucose meters, blood pressure monitors and stress level meters, and related smartphone-based health applications are increasing in usage and popularity. These Internet-based medical technologies, which this paper refers to as mHealth systems, may be prescribed by a healthcare professional or purchased over-the-counter and make it easier for an individual to collect, access and monitor information relevant to their own health and well-being. However, as with many Internet-based technologies, and especially so with sensitive, personal health information, privacy is a significant concern. Actual or a perceived risk of privacy intrusions may delay the wider adoption of mHealth systems and even generate mistrust that reduces their long-term effectiveness. This paper contributes to the understanding of users’ perspectives on information privacy in mHealth systems.
Objective:
To gain an understanding of current usage patterns and how important users perceive privacy, we have conducted a national survey in Australia. Understanding consumers’ preferences and expectations provide directions for developers, lawmakers and researchers in creating an improved mHealth ecosystem.
Methods:
As part of the National Social Survey by Population Research Laboratory of CQUniversity, participants who were 18 years or older were randomly selected from across Australia for telephone interviews. The participants were asked 10 questions about usage and privacy of mobile health systems. The collected data was tabulated, cleaned and analysed using SPSS and the resultant data set contained 1,225 cases with a total of 187 variables for each case.
Results:
The survey reveals users of mHealth systems have a strong desire for privacy, e.g. more than 80% rate privacy important or very important and more than 60% think no personal information should be released to developers. The survey also shows around 70% of users never or rarely review privacy policies, and that they perceive the significant potential impact of intrusions, including increased health insurance costs, embarrassment and financial loss.
Conclusions:
While the survey results show users desire privacy and have low trust of telecommunications and IT organisations, this conflicts with the technical design of mHealth systems: in many cases application developers, device manufacturers and telecommunication companies may have access to sensitive health information. The lack of standardization and guidelines for data processing by mHealth systems, as well as ineffectiveness of privacy policies, need to be addressed to avoid users’ confusion and potential invasions of privacy.
ClinicalTrial:
This research is undertaken as part of our CQUniversity Population Research Grant Scheme (PRGS). NSS-2016 received approval by the Human Ethics Research Review Panel at CQUniversity before administration to the general public. Project: H14/09-203, NATIONAL SOCIAL SURVEY 2016.
Citation
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