Attitudes of Developers Towards Privacy in Personal Health Applications

Abstract

In a world of rapidly expanding digital health technologies (eHealth), the development of technology often outpaces the protection of individuals' rights to privacy about their health data. In this paper, we discuss attitudes towards privacy from the perspective of developers, Information Security Officers and management, which we contextualize to eHealth, as well as discuss ways to improve privacy protection through education, regulatory improvements, documentation changes, and privacy-enhancing technology (PETs). The General Data Protection Regulation mandates technologies be developed with private-by-design philosophy. However, the studies we review show that the implementation of this mandate is still lacking, despite the importance of its implementation for eHealth. We conclude by summarising the main barriers to the protection of privacy in technology, as well as suggest actions to be taken, including by whom, towards addressing these issues.