Protecting patient privacy in digital health technology: The Dutch m-Health infrastructure of Hartwacht as a learning case

Abstract

Innovative ways of healthcare delivery like m-Health, the practice of medicine by mobile devices and wearable devices are the promising new technique that may lead to improvement in quality of care at lower costs. While fully acknowledging the importance of m-Health development, there are challenges on privacy legislation. We address the legal framework, especially the General Data Protection Regulation, applied to m-Health and its implications for m-Health developments in Europe. We discuss how these rules are applied using a representative example of an m-Health programme with remote monitoring in the Netherlands. We consider informing patients about the data processing and obtaining their explicit consent as main responsibilities of healthcare providers introducing m-Health in their practice.