mHealth to Securely Coach Chronic Patients

This paper aims to summarize and discuss the privacy, security, interactions and safety challenges for the case study of a mobile Health application (mHealth app), for chronic obstructive respiratory diseases, namely AIRDOC - a Smart Mobile Application for Individualized Support and Monitoring of the Respiratory Function and Sounds. mHealth apps create opportunities for improving health outcomes of patients with chronic diseases. However, privacy and security features need to be much improved. Social/behavioural (interactional), technical and legal aspects need to converge to provide a more comprehensive privacy protection when patients interact with mHealth apps. By guaranteeing privacy, more secure, safer and better health results can be achieved, with patients more empowered and in control of their personal health data protection. An embedded security infrastructure, with GDPR compliance and controlling data access, usage and sharing functionalities, together with a continuous risk assessment and enhancement from user and interactions profiling feedback, can help provide useful and long-life trusted mHealth solutions.