Bipartisan senators sent letters to telehealth providers Monument, Workit Health and Cerebral urging the companies to better protect users' healthcare data.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Susan Collins (R-Me.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wa.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo,) expressed concerns that the companies are "tracking and sharing sensitive and personally-identifiable health data with third-party...
Many popular women's health apps fail to meet basic data privacy and security standards, according to a review published in JMIR.
The study analyzed 23 of the most downloaded and highest rated femtech apps on Apple's App Store and Google Play by two independent reviewers on data privacy, data sharing and security assessment criteria. Sixteen of the apps were related to fertility, cycle tracking...
A call for independent policing of non-HIPAA health data. The Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit organization focused on tech policy and architecture, and the eHealth Initiative & Foundation, a coalition of industry and academic stakeholders, yesterday released a framework proposal calling for self-regulation of consumer data use by health devices and products that don't...
Google’s $2 billion acquisition of Fitbit last month has been met with concern from privacy advocates worried about how the tech giant will use personal fitness data. This reaction prompted the tech giant to clarify that the acquisition is "about devices, not data."
The deal has brought to light a larger issue that we all seem to gloss over: Every day, millions of people publicly share seemingly...
Following months of regulatory investigation, the European Commission has officially signed off on Google's $2.1 billion purchase of health-wearable-maker Fitbit. Still, the go-ahead is contingent on a handful of commitments from the tech company that focus on its competitive practices across advertising, digital health APIs and smart device interoperability.
"We can approve the proposed...
COVID-19 may not be the first pandemic the world has faced, but the virus' challenge comes amidst widespread skepticism of longstanding public health institutions. Government-led responses to outbreaks have varied from country to country, and incongruent messaging between political leaders, health agencies and other sources of information have fueled varying levels of concern and distrust among...
U.S. consumers want to understand how and why their personal health data is being used by organizations, and may change their data sharing behaviors if they believe the information is being used to improve health outcomes for themselves or others, according to recent survey from health data intelligence firm W2O.
Conducted in two 1,000-person waves in September 2019 and May 2020, the poll...
Senate Republicans introduced a new bill during the tail end of last week that seeks to increase transparency and ownership of personal health, geolocation, proximity and other related data collected by digital devices or systems during the COVID-19 public health emergency.
The so-called COVID-19 Consumer Data Protection Act was introduced by Sen. Roger Wicker R-Miss.; Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.;...
Unfortunately for us, MobiHealthNews doesn’t have a crystal ball (it would be darn useful for getting scoops). But we do have more than a decade’s worth of experience tracking the emergence of this space and we spend a lot of our time talking to smart people with industry experience and opinions of their own.
As we enter into a new decade in 2020, your MobiHealthNews staff has put our heads...
The increased spotlight on Google’s healthcare privacy practices doesn’t seem to be letting up, with the Washington Post publishing a story this morning detailing a botched arrangement between the tech giant and the National Institutes of Health back in 2017.
The two groups had a research arrangement centered on more than 100,000 chest X-ray images provided to Google by the NIH. However,...
