Understanding Privacy Concerns in Mobile Health Applications: A Scenario-based Online Survey

Mobile Health applications facilitate users in managing their health and receiving health care services. Despite a proven utility, several privacy concerns have been raised. At this frontier, we should be responsible for enhancing our understanding of user privacy concerns and enabling privacy by design. This study uncovers and compares individual privacy concerns within health applications. Our scenario-based approach considers 432 different health application data exchanges. Participants (n=189) assessed 27 unique scenarios across three categories: data type, data sharing, and data retention. The findings show user concerns in the three categories, most prominently, data sharing. From this position, we propose design approaches to improve user awareness and control of health application data. We discuss the finding’s implications, including pre-emptive and predictive strategies for health app developers.