Assessing the privacy policies in mobile personal health records

Author

Zapata, Belen Cruz ; Hernandez Ninirola, Antonio ; Fernandez-Aleman, Jose Luis ; Toval, Ambrosio

Author_Institution

Dept. of Inf. & Syst., Univ. of Murcia, Murcia, Spain

fYear

2014

fDate

26-30 Aug. 2014

Firstpage

4956

Lastpage

4959

Abstract

The huge increase in the number and use of smartphones and tablets has led health service providers to take an interest in mHealth. Popular mobile app markets like Apple App Store or Google Play contain thousands of health applications. Although mobile personal health records (mPHRs) have a number of benefits, important challenges appear in the form of adoption barriers. Security and privacy have been identified as part of these barriers and should be addressed. This paper analyzes and assesses a total of 24 free mPHRs for Android and iOS. Characteristics regarding privacy and security were extracted from the HIPAA. The results show important differences in both the mPHRs and the characteristics analyzed. A questionnaire containing six questions concerning privacy policies was defined. Our questionnaire may assist developers and stakeholders to evaluate the security and privacy of their mPHRs.

Keywords

Android (operating system); data privacy; electronic health records; mobile computing; security of data; Android; Apple app store; Google play; health service providers; iOS; m-health; mPHRs; mobile personal health records; privacy policy assessment; smart phones; tablets; Androids; Authentication; Humanoid robots; Mobile communication; Privacy; Systematics;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2014 36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE

Conference_Location

Chicago, IL

ISSN

1557-170X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/EMBC.2014.6944736

Filename

6944736