Healthcare at Your Fingertips: The Professional Ethics of Smartphone Health-Monitoring Applications

Abstract

Health professionals are inundated by the surfeit of health apps while lacking guidance to help them critically evaluate whether a particular health-monitoring app is safe, likely to lead to clinical benefit, and not introduce additional liability. Our objective is not to argue for or against the use of mobile health-monitoring apps but to illuminate the associated ethical issues and provide recommendations to guide the ethical decision-making process for clinicians who are considering the use of a mobile health-monitoring app. To this end, the Canadian Code of Ethics for Psychologists is used as a framework to situate recommendations.

Keywords:

• consumer ethics
• decision making
• health care

FUNDING

This research was supported in part by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to V.K.

Notes

¹ In the law of tort, liability for battery could result when a health provider provides treatment without consent (Reibl v. Hughes, 1980). A battery is an intentional and direct interference with a person that is either harmful or offensive to a reasonable person (Baker, 2011). In addition, failure to disclose all the relevant information that a patient would want to know about treatment (including mobile apps that provide or inform treatment) could be negligence (Reibl v. Hughes, 1980).

² The collection, use, and disclosure of personal health information by a mobile health app developer or service provider is regulated under applicable privacy legislation. The applicable privacy legislation depends upon the jurisdiction and the nature of the developer or service provider. In Alberta, for instance, health app developers that are themselves health custodians (e.g., hospitals and pharmacies) are regulated by the Health Information Act. Otherwise, provided that the developer is not a federally regulated undertaking, the organization will be regulated by the Personal Information Protection Act in Alberta.

³ In the law of tort, a health care provider could be liable for negligence if he or she breaches a duty of care that causes harm to the patient (Cooper v. Hobart, 2001). Thus, the negligent use of a mobile health app in treating a patient could result in liability.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by a Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to V.K.