Health app data ‘shared’
pharmafile | September 2, 2013 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | health apps, pharma
It has been reported that user information from some of the most popular health and wellbeing apps is being transmitted to third parties including pharma companies.
In a Financial Times article, web analytics company Evidon says apps including MapMyFitness, WebMD Health and iPeriod are sharing information on usage with outside organisations.
The apps have said that information transmitted about users is not personally identifiable and is not being sold.
WebMd said it “did not allow third-party companies to combine the consumer data collected about its users with other profile information or use it beyond its site”.
The appeal for companies may be that establishing the health profiles of people based on their app use does not contravene long-standing rules about selling medical records.
Apps typically allow users to do things such as calculate the number of calories they are consuming or the distances they are walking or cycling, and can be routinely downloaded for free via iPhone, iPad and android devices and platforms such as iTunes.
One dictum about the individual’s relationship with the internet is pertinent here: if you can’t see what the product is, then the product is probably you.
“If there is a lot of content that is being provided to you for free, data are driving the economy of that content,” Scott Meyer, chief executive of Evidon, told the FT.
In other words, it is unlikely that you will be receiving a service entirely for nothing or for a small cost and the raison d’etre – or at least a key driver in the development – of many apps is to gain information about their users.
Browsing habits of consumers are routinely used to allow advertisers to personalise their approaches online but people tend to view health information – some of it potentially intimate – as somehow more sensitive than other types of data, and this may lead to greater concerns about the use of this information.
Pharma has attempted to get to grips with the technology in a variety of ways, creating apps designed to help patients such as AstraZeneca’s programme to help prostate cancer patients monitor their PSA levels.
However, app use is not as widespread as is popularly assumed, with one recent survey suggesting that only 18% of consumers use their mobiles to download health-related apps.
Earlier this year Pfizer failed to recruit patients via an app to an overactive bladder trial, suggesting that the practical applications of app use are complex.
Adam Hill
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