Health information, human factors and privacy issues in mobile health applications

Abstract

Recent innovations on mobile technologies combined with the widespread use of mobile devices have allowed for a new perspective on health care applications: mobile health applications (m-Health). Ensuring information privacy while delivering the expected vital signs monitoring is still a challenge for the adoption and use of these applications. Most research focuses on methods and techniques to prevent unauthorized access of personal information in the context of mHealth; our research considers the m-Health user's point of view. From a systematic literature review in the Computer Science literature, we identified the main users' demands concerning privacy. There are different types of privacy issues with different types of proposed solutions. Users' privacy preferences and information sharing issues are emphasized showing the counterpoint for privacy. Our objective in this paper is to contribute towards a better understanding of the trade-offs between users' desires and privacy concerns with regard to the adoption of the m-Health technology, identifying issues that need to be addressed in order to reduce users' concerns about privacy in m-Health.