Investigating data accessibility of personal health apps.
Objective: Despite the potential values self-tracking data could offer, we have little understanding of how much access people have to "their" data. Our goal of this article is to unveil the current state of the data accessibility-the degree to which people can access their data-of personal health a...
| Published in: | Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association Vol. 26; no. 5; pp. 412 - 420 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Oxford University Press / USA
May2019
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=135583537&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 135583537 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 10675027 FZ9 jtl: Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association issn: 10675027 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: May2019 vid: 26 iid: 5 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 135583537 135583537 NLM30861531 10.1093/jamia/ocz003 NLM30861531 135583537 ppf: 412 ppct: 8 formats: tig: atl: Investigating data accessibility of personal health apps. aug: au: Kim, Yoojung Lee, Bongshin Choe, Eun Kyoung affil: Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea sug: subj: Mobile Applications Medical Records, Personal Patient Access to Records Access to Information Family Inventory of Life Events and Changes Personal Resource Questionnaire Questionnaires ab: Objective: Despite the potential values self-tracking data could offer, we have little understanding of how much access people have to "their" data. Our goal of this article is to unveil the current state of the data accessibility-the degree to which people can access their data-of personal health apps in the market.Materials and Methods: We reviewed 240 personal health apps from the App Store and selected 45 apps that support semi-automated tracking. We characterized the data accessibility of these apps using two dimensions-data access methods and data types.Results: More than 90% of our sample apps (n = 41) provide some types of data access support, which include synchronizing data with a health platform (ie, Apple Health), file download, and application program interfaces. However, the two approachable data access methods for laypeople-health platform and file download-typically put a significant limit on data format, granularity, and amount, which constrains people from easily repurposing the data.Discussion: Personal data should be accessible to the people who collect them, but existing methods lack sufficient support for people in accessing the fine-grained data. Lack of standards in personal health data schema as well as frequent changes in market conditions are additional hurdles to data accessibility.Conclusions: Many stakeholders including patients, healthcare providers, researchers, third-party developers, and the general public rely on data accessibility to utilize personal data for various goals. As such, improving data accessibility should be considered as an important factor in designing personal health apps and health platforms. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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