Wearable health data privacy
The Lancet Digital Health
Abstract
Wearable health-care technology has traditionally been used to monitor and improve the personal fitness of the wearer. More recently, wearables have been used by researchers in health-care research to record uniquely continuous, longitudinal health data outside of clinical settings. Data collected from wearables has been used in a plethora of research applications; from predicting COVID-19 diagnosis to surveilling influenza in real time. This month's issue of The Lancet Digital Health includes a systematic review by Chikwetu and colleagues, who aimed to provide an overview on reidentification risks of deidentified data from wearable devices, which represents a potential loss of privacy to personal and sometimes sensitive medical information.