Dementia and mHealth: On the Way to GDPR Compliance

Abstract

Innovative technological solutions for people with some kind of mental or cognitive health issues, have the potential to keep the brain active and help them to be as independent as possible in their daily lives. Therefore, those solutions can improve the overall older adult’s quality of life and, particularly, of those with dementia or Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). In a previous paper, the authors discussed the potential of mobile apps for people with dementia and their compliance with the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). However, and despite all the advantages, a lack of security standards or guidelines and low GDPR compliance was noticed on the analysed MCI mobile apps. This may raise serious concerns, as older adults living with this condition, may be particularly susceptible and vulnerable to risk of privacy breaches. This paper extends that work by using lessons learned and extracted requirements (e.g., GDPR and visual security requirements), together with an adaptable access control model (e.g., SoTRAACE), to build mHealth mockups for people with MCI based on a use-case of a persona, an older adult with a slight decline in cognitive abilities who uses a computer-assisted/mobile cognitive training application to delay his cognitive decline. The authors also aim to bring awareness to researchers, designers, developers and health professionals for the improvement of security and privacy of mHealth for dementia.