Cybersecurity and Privacy

The Oura Ring Gen 3
By  Emily Olsen 12:35 pm May 10, 2023
Oura, the company behind a health tracking ring wearable, announced Tuesday it had purchased digital identification startup Proxy in an all-equity deal. Proxy offers digital identity tech that aims to replace keys, cards, badges, apps and passwords. The startup said it had been working to include its offerings on wearable devices as well as phones.  According to reporting by Bloomberg, the deal...
Moderator David Gray and Jodi Daniel
By  Emily Olsen 02:52 pm April 19, 2023
After years of slow movement advancing telehealth, remote patient monitoring and other digital health technologies, the landscape changed rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Jodi Daniel, managing director of Crowell Health Solutions.  At HIMSS23, Daniel, who previously served as the founding director of the Office of Policy in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information...
Brad Reimer, Mira Kang and Shannon Crotwell
By  Emily Olsen 12:03 pm April 17, 2023
CHICAGO – When Charlotte, N.C.-based Atrium Health's Sanger Heart and Vascular Center was first implementing its remote patient monitoring program, the hardest lift was getting devices into patients' hands and troubleshooting problems, said program coordinator Shannon Crotwell. They began with internet-connected devices, asking patients to download an app where they'd need an Apple ID. Then they...
A person talking to a provider through a video chat on a laptop
By  Emily Olsen 10:32 am April 5, 2023
Online alcohol recovery programs Monument and Tempest shared users' personal information with third-party advertisers for several years, according to a data breach notification filed last week with California's attorney general.  In the notice, first reported by TechCrunch, Monument said it used pixel-tracking technologies from companies like Meta, Google, Bing and Pinterest "without the...
A person wearing CGM tracking blood glucose data on a smartphone
By  Jessica Hagen 10:19 am March 7, 2023
Consumers are most willing to share their health information when privacy protections are in place, with consent being the most important, followed by data deletion, regulatory oversight and data transparency, according to a conjoint analysis published in JAMA Network Open.  The 2020 national survey included responses from 3,539 U.S. adults, with an oversampling of Black and Hispanic individuals...
A person using a laptop.
By  Emily Olsen 10:13 am March 3, 2023
The Federal Trade Commission has started cracking down on digital health companies for allegedly sharing consumers' health data for advertising purposes.  Last month, the agency said GoodRx had shared personal health information with third parties like Google and Facebook. The company, best known for its drug-cost transparency tools, agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine to settle the case, but...
A person talking to a provider through a video chat on a tablet.
By  Emily Olsen 12:58 pm March 2, 2023
The Federal Trade Commission has fined online therapy company BetterHelp $7.8 million for allegedly sharing consumer data with third parties like Facebook and Snapchat for advertising purposes. The proposed order – the second recent action by the FTC regarding data sharing by a digital health company – would also ban BetterHelp from disclosing health data for advertising. The agency said this is...
A close up of a person wearing a smartwatch.
By  Emily Olsen 11:49 am February 21, 2023
Deidentifying data from wearable devices may not be enough to protect users' privacy, according to a review of studies published in the Lancet Digital Health.  The analysis focused on studies that evaluated whether individuals could be reidentified based on biometric signals from wearables. The researchers included 72 studies in their final review. Most focused on using EEG, ECG and inertial...
Person using laptop
Sponsored
By  09:00 am February 16, 2023
A healthcare risk prediction algorithm used on more than 200 million people across the country was found to demonstrate racial bias. One-third of the top 100 hospitals in the U.S. were found to be using a tracking tool called Meta Pixel to collect and send patients’ personal health information to Facebook without their consent. Pulse oximeters – digital products that use infrared light beams to...
Healthcare provider on a computer
By  Jessica Hagen 01:15 pm February 9, 2023
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...