Most health apps lack privacy policy
Less than one-third of the 600 most common healthcare apps have a privacy policy in place and those that do don't provide transparency on privacy practices.
More than half of the existing privacy policies aren't focused on the software, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
"Our findings show that currently mHealth developers often fail to provide app privacy policies. The privacy policies that are available do not make information privacy practices transparent to users, require college-level literacy and are often not focused on the app itself," the study's authors said.
Mobile apps are being highly rated and sold while privacy policies are either missing, are too complex to understand or just plain irrelevant, according to the authors.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.