Ethical Implications of User Perceptions of Wearable Devices

Abstract

Health Wearable Devices enhance the quality of life, promote positive lifestyle changes and save time and money in medical appointments. However, Wearable Devices store large amounts of personal information that is accessed by third parties without user consent. This creates ethical issues regarding privacy, security and informed consent. This paper aims to demonstrate users' ethical perceptions of the use of Wearable Devices in the health sector. The impact of ethics is determined by an online survey which was conducted from patients and users with random female and male division. Results from this survey demonstrate that Wearable Device users are highly concerned regarding privacy issues and consider informed consent as "very important" when sharing information with third parties. However, users do not appear to relate privacy issues with informed consent. Additionally, users expressed the need for having shorter privacy policies that are easier to read, a more understandable informed consent form that involves regulatory authorities and there should be legal consequences the violation or misuse of health information provided to Wearable Devices. The survey results present an ethical framework that will enhance the ethical development of Wearable Technology.

Developments in Privacy and Data Ownership in Mobile Health Technologies, 2016-2019

“…Mobile app data security continues to be an area of concern for the industry. Many authors discuss the vulnerabilities of data when being stored or during transmission to third parties [28,74,75]. There is still some debate in the literature about the security risks and benefits of the cloud; while some authors fear that cloud infrastructure is more susceptible to privacy and security attacks [76], others postulate that cloud service providers may address data privacy and security more effectively due to economies of scale and scope, which enable them to maintain more sophisticated defenses against cyber-attacks [77].…”

“…That same study showed that 40% of the apps failed to protect the integrity of the data they displayed [91]. Other authors also expressed concerns that data integrity could be compromised as a result of attacks during transmission over public networks or simply due to immature sensor-based technology [74,75,78,80,92]. Another oft-cited concern regarding data collected outside of the clinical setting regards its authenticity, accuracy, and provenance [92,93].…”

“…Informed consent, in the context of mHealth applications, involves the permission granted by patients or their legal representative regarding when and with whom their personal information is shared [74]. This, along with mechanisms to enable individual control of data, supports the ethical frameworks of autonomy or respect for persons, as well as beneficence and non-maleficence [95,102,103].…”

“…Multiple authors, therefore, recommend increasing education to improve digital literacy and citizenship, both among professionals and patients [74,122,123]. Some authors additionally point out the "notice and choice paradigm" whereby the limited user interfaces inherent to many mHealth products make it difficult to surface adequate notice of privacy policies; while vendors can and do send their policy statements through e-mail, the user may not directly associate them with the app or wearable [33].…”

“…User concern with privacy of personal data collected by mobile health apps is widely variable. In some studies, data privacy and security was cited as of primary concern or importance [74,134,138], while in others, users expressed very little concern [125,[139][140][141][142][143][144][145]. Still other authors noted this dichotomy within their reported results with some participants expressing significant privacy concerns and others stating it to not be an issue [146,147].…”