A vulnerability study of Mhealth chronic disease management (CDM) applications (apps)

Abstract

The mhealth applications industry has witnessed a significant growth both in revenue and popularity since its inception. The introduction of mhealth CDM apps has improved the management of chronic diseases as it provides the physicians with an opportunity to monitor their patients’ health for symptoms more efficiently and effectively. With the benefits of the mhealth CDM apps, also comes vulnerabilities that can cause unauthorized access to the patients’ health information and manipulation to the patients’ data. The presence of these vulnerabilities can cause harm to the patients’ health and reputations. Currently there is a lack of security assurance framework tailored to the mhealth CDM apps. In this regard, the objective of the research was to conduct a vulnerability study on mhealth CDM apps and to provide a set of security assurance recommendations tailored to the mhealth CDM apps for better security and assurance in the apps. In order to achieve the research objective, thirty mhealth CDM apps were tested for vulnerabilities using vulnerability scanner apps, after identifying the vulnerabilities, mobile applications related frameworks and guidelines were reviewed to come up with the security assurance recommendations for mhealth CDM apps.