Rosenfeld Lisa, Torous John, Vahia Ipsit V
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA; Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA; Division of Geriatric Psychiatry, McLean Hospital, Belmont, MA.
Department of Psychiatry and Clinical Informatics, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical, Harvard Medical School Center, Boston, MA.
Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2017 Aug;25(8):873-877. doi: 10.1016/j.jagp.2017.04.009. Epub 2017 Jun 1.
Despite tremendous growth in the number of health applications (apps), little is known about how well these apps protect their users' health-related data. This gap in knowledge is of particular concern for apps targeting people with dementia, whose cognitive impairment puts them at increased risk of privacy breaches. In this article, we determine how many dementia apps have privacy policies and how well they protect user data.
Our analysis included all iPhone apps that matched the search terms "medical + dementia" or "health & fitness + dementia" and collected user-generated content. We evaluated all available privacy policies for these apps based on criteria that systematically measure how individual user data is handled.
Seventy-two apps met the above search teams and collected user data. Of these, only 33 (46%) had an available privacy policy. Nineteen of the 33 with policies (58%) were specific to the app in question, and 25 (76%) specified how individual-user as opposed to aggregate data would be handled. Among these, there was a preponderance of missing information, the majority acknowledged collecting individual data for internal purposes, and most admitted to instances in which they would share user data with outside parties.
At present, the majority of health apps focused on dementia lack a privacy policy, and those that do exist lack clarity. Bolstering safeguards and improving communication about privacy protections will help facilitate consumer trust in apps, thereby enabling more widespread and meaningful use by people with dementia and those involved in their care.
尽管健康应用程序（应用）的数量有了巨大增长，但对于这些应用如何保护用户的健康相关数据，我们却知之甚少。对于针对痴呆症患者的应用来说，这种知识空白尤其令人担忧，因为他们的认知障碍使他们面临更高的隐私泄露风险。在本文中，我们确定了有多少痴呆症应用具有隐私政策，以及它们在保护用户数据方面的表现如何。
我们的分析涵盖了所有与搜索词“医疗+痴呆症”或“健康与健身+痴呆症”匹配且收集用户生成内容的iPhone应用。我们根据系统衡量个人用户数据处理方式的标准，对这些应用的所有可用隐私政策进行了评估。
72个应用符合上述搜索条件并收集了用户数据。其中，只有33个（46%）有可用的隐私政策。在这33个有政策的应用中，19个（58%）是针对该应用本身的，25个（76%）规定了将如何处理个人用户数据而非汇总数据。在这些政策中，存在大量信息缺失的情况，大多数承认出于内部目的收集个人数据，并且大多数承认存在将用户数据与外部各方共享的情况。
目前，大多数专注于痴呆症的健康应用缺乏隐私政策，而那些存在的隐私政策也不够清晰。加强保障措施并改善关于隐私保护的沟通，将有助于促进消费者对应用的信任，从而使痴呆症患者及其护理人员能够更广泛、更有意义地使用这些应用。
