Giving Compass' Take:

• Fred Donovan reports that wearable health trackers are helping individuals improve their health, but as they grow in popularity the need to address the security risks they pose also grows. 

• How can funders help to spread this technology while ensuring patient information security? 

• Learn more about patient health data challenges. 

Despite the patient privacy risks that collecting health data on insecure wearable devices could pose, the number of US consumers tracking their health data with wearables has more than doubled since 2013, according to the Deloitte 2018 Survey of US Health Care Consumers.

Of those who used wearables in the past year, 73 percent said they used them consistently.

Sixty percent of the 4,530 respondents said they are willing to share PHI generated from wearable devices with their doctor to improve their health.

“For health systems that are collecting this information, it is important that they safeguard the privacy of that information,” Sarah Thomas, managing director of Deloitte’s Center for Health Solutions, told HealthITSecurity.com.

“If it is about their personal health, then it is clear that the information needs to be safeguarded and subject to HIPAA,” she added.

The Deloitte survey found that the use of wearables and other tools for measuring fitness and health improvement goals jumped from 17 percent in 2013 to 42 percent in 2018.

The data generated from wearables and other mobile devices has the potential to help improve population health, advance clinical research, and enhance the performance of devices, Deloitte observed.

Read the full article about wearables that track health by Fred Donovan at Health IT Security.