Perceptions of Security and Privacy in mHealth

摘要

Mobile health applications have a great potential in improving patient's monitoring and adherence to therapeutics, anytime/anywhere. However, security is often overlooked in the design of those applications, and their low adoption is partially explained by end-users' security and privacy concerns. A change of the current "one-app-fits-all" paradigm to a more customized view of mHealth security features, for different user groups, skills, concerns or contexts, is required. This study aims to explore if content, context and users' characteristics, influence the perception of security and privacy in mHealth apps. An anonymous online survey was administered to social network users (n = 69). Statistically significant associations were found between age and security variables such as: i) type of requested data, ii) type of connection used and iii) access to sensitive health data comprising a child's records. Other statistically significant associations were found between the access to specific health sensitive data and the type of connection and device used. Pursuing this line of research has the potential to help mapping users' privacy and security perceptions to mHealth data. This can promote a better understanding of how ensuing apps should be visually, technically and security-wise.