Privacy Assessment in Mobile Health Apps: Scoping Review
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
Background: Privacy has always been a concern, especially in the health domain. The proliferation of mobile health (mHealth) apps has led to a large amount of sensitive data being generated. Some authors have performed privacy assessments of mHealth apps. They have evaluated diverse privacy components; however, different authors have used different criteria for their assessments. Objective: This scoping review aims to understand how privacy is assessed for mHealth apps, focusing on the components, scales, criteria, and scoring methods used. A simple taxonomy to categorize the privacy assessments of mHealth apps based on component evaluation is also proposed. Methods: We followed the methodology defined by Arksey and O’Malley to conduct a scoping review. Included studies were categorized based on the privacy component, which was assessed using the proposed taxonomy. Results: The database searches retrieved a total of 710 citations—24 of them met the defined selection criteria, and data were extracted from them. Even though the inclusion criteria considered articles published since 2009, all the studies that were ultimately included were published from 2014 onward. Although 12 papers out of 24 (50%) analyzed only privacy, 8 (33%) analyzed both privacy and security. Moreover, 4 papers (17%) analyzed full apps, with privacy being just part of the assessment. The evaluation criteria used by authors were heterogeneous and were based on their experience, the literature, and/or existing legal frameworks. Regarding the set of items used for the assessments, each article defined a different one. Items included app permissions, analysis of the destination, analysis of the content of communications, study of the privacy policy, use of remote storage, and existence of a password to access the app, among many others. Most of the included studies provided a scoring method that enables the comparison of privacy among apps. Conclusions: The privacy assessment of mHealth apps is a complex task, as the criteria used by different authors for their evaluations are very heterogeneous. Although some studies about privacy assessment have been conducted, a very large set of items to evaluate privacy has been used up until now. In-app information and privacy policies are primarily utilized by the scientific community to extract privacy information from mHealth apps. The creation of a scale based on more objective criteria is a desirable step forward for privacy assessment in the future.
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Data security concerns were rarely mentioned as potential barriers to app use.
“In comparison to previous findings, data security concerns were rarely mentioned as potential barriers to app use [63].”
From Barriers to and Facilitators of a Blended Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program for Depression and Anxiety Based on Experiences of University Students: Qualitative Interview Study (2023) · cites this paper as [63]
The Introduction (page unavailable) says some smartphone users do not download mHealth apps because they are concerned about apps collecting their data, supporting the barrier-to-use point. It does not say such concerns were rarely mentioned or measure how often users mentioned them; it instead calls data privacy a recurrent topic in qualitative studies. (LLM, conf=0.85)
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“In comparison to previous findings, data security concerns were rarely mentioned as potential barriers to app use [63].”
Result
- Authors
- Benjumea, J., Ropero, J., Rivera-Romero, O., Dorronzoro-Zubiete, E., & Carrasco, A.
- Affiliations
- Universidad de Sevilla (ES)
- Corresponding author
- Benjumea, Jaime
- ORCID
- Venue
- JMIR mHealth and uHealth
- Publisher
- JMIR Publications Inc.
- Published
- 2020-07-02
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 7
- Pages
- e18868
- ISSN
- 2291-5222 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7367524
- OpenAlex
- W3024846856
- Cited by
- 69
- References
- 39
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 7
- FWCI
- 2.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- JMIR mhealth and uhealth (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- idUS (Universidad de Sevilla) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Universidad de Sevilla
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Mobile Health and mHealth Applications
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Privacy, Security, and Data Protection
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Thoreau and American Literature
- Keywords
- mobile health apps, privacy analysis, privacy policies, application permissions, privacy and security, sensitive health data
- MeSH terms
- Communication, Humans, Research Design, Telemedicine, Privacy, Mobile Applications
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