Data Security: Mobile Health Applications

Data Security Student’s Name Institutional Affiliation Data Security The digital age has brought about various means of making life easier for individuals. Recently, mobile health applications have been developed to help patients easily retrieve and follow up with their medical records from their phones. However, Singer (2019) argues that the sharing of data through applications could interfere with patient privacy. According to the author, the federal government is on the verge of completing rules for sharing medical data that require health care providers to share patient information via third party applications, once the patient authorizes. This is so despite the warnings from organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Medical Association, which claims that patients who authorize the sharing of information via third party apps risk having their data abused. The switch to mobile retrieval is aimed at eliminating the current problems that patients have in trying to gain access to their medical information. Singer (2019) explains that patients are mostly required to collect their information physically from the providers. Top technology companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Google have also made various adjustments to accommodate the shift to digital medical records, but such changes could be strategic to take advantage of the growing health market. In fact, researchers have argued that these third-party companies are most likely to share patient data with other organizations to gain profit. A recent study by Grundy, Chiu, Held, Continella, Bero and Holz (2019), discovered that four in five third party companies share user’s medical records with outside entities. Furthermore, the third-party companies are also well equipped to be able to aggregate the data and use it to identify a specific user. These mobile app developers share user data for revenues or in exchange for better services that enhance a user’s experience. As explained by Singer, the main purpose of introducing mobile applications is to facilitate quick and easy access to patient medical records. Patients have a right to access their medical records as stated u...