User interface design for privacy awareness in eHealth technologies

In this paper we investigate privacy issues relating to Human Computer Interfaces for mobile eHealth technologies. We present the Inform-Alert-Mitigate (I-AM) cycle, a novel approach to address privacy concerns that are associated with the use of these technologies. The I-AM approach supports the responsible innovation of new technologies. We demonstrate the effectiveness of I-AM by applying it to examples taken from mobile applications relating to personal health. We discuss three classes of applications: a) fitness trackers b) personal wellbeing applications and c) medical applications, and evaluate the privacy exposure of their users using representative applications from these classes. The paper evaluates the current privacy enhancing features of these applications against the identified risks and demonstrates how the I-AM approach can be applied to yield additional and more effective privacy protection for these technologies.