Rethinking consent in mHealth:(A) Moment to process

Abstract

The field of mobile health promises a transformation of the healthcare industry, by providing health-related information and services directly to individuals, through digital mobile devices. This presents society with new platforms for persuasive systems for healthy behavior change. Before such systems’ full potential can be utilized, however, the question of how to consent to their use needs to be addressed. In this paper, I argue that one-off all-encompassing consent moments at the start of use of persuasive mobile health services do not suffice, given the functions they present, and the context in which they are used. Persuasive mobile health services are not only data-intensive, they are also designed to influence the user’s behavior and health. Informed consent should be temporally distributed, in order to improve the quality of the user’s autonomous authorization, that this context requires.