Period and fertility-tracking-app maker Flo Health has settled with the Federal Trade Commission regarding a complaint alleging improper disclosure of sensitive user data to third-party marketing and analytics services from Facebook, Google and others, the agency announced today.
The FTC's complaint listed several ways in which Flo deceived its users. These included messaging from the company...
A multidimensional approach to health was already gaining considerable momentum prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. From physical fitness, to mental wellbeing, the health tech consumer landscape was evolving and innovating at a steady speed. However, what was previously modest growth in health tech adoption has since spiked rapidly due to the pandemic. According to a study by Deloitte, due to...
Leading French independent health insurer Alan has teamed up with data security company Tanker to bring end-to-end encryption to its telehealth chat platform. The service is the first telehealth chat platform available to the general public that is end-to-end encrypted.
WHY IT MATTERS
The Alan app links users with associated doctors through a messaging service or video-consultations, which enable...
As healthcare becomes more digitized and clinical treatments shift away from one-size-fits-all therapies, the industry will need to become more critical about how it's employing and curating health data.
For vendors and providers, it's about understanding what tools are at their disposal and how they can be implemented to maintain and improve the standard of care. But for regulators like the FDA...
COVID-19 may not be the first pandemic the world has faced, but the virus' challenge comes amidst widespread skepticism of longstanding public health institutions. Government-led responses to outbreaks have varied from country to country, and incongruent messaging between political leaders, health agencies and other sources of information have fueled varying levels of concern and distrust among...
A new survey conducted among consumers and IT professionals by data security company SecureAge Technology suggests that the clear majority of these groups believe COVID-19 contact-tracing technologies put individuals' personally identifiable information at risk. Despite this, both groups generally believed that these types of tools could help cut down the impact of the disease, and would support...
Picking through the scraps. Following the bankruptcy of 'digital pill' maker Proteus Digital Health, business partner and stakeholder Otsuka Pharmaceutical has been approved to purchase the digital health company's assets by a federal bankruptcy court judge, STAT reports.
Otsuka's bid was challenged by Novartis, two former Proteus executives and other investors, who argued that the agreed upon $...
Google has posted an update on Exposure Notifications – their system-level framework for COVID-19 contact tracing developed in tandem with Apple – revealing that the tools have been incorporated into digital contact-tracing apps launched in 16 countries.
Further, 20 U.S. states and territories are "exploring apps" based on the system, according to Google, the first set of which are expected to go...
Despite very public messaging that the Bluetooth contact-tracing tools for COVID-19 developed by Google and Apple would not track users' locations, its implementation within Android operating systems still collects GPS data that Google could use to determine the user's location, The New York Times reports.
The issue is driven by the operating system's device location setting, which must be...
Bahrain and Kuwait are using their COVID-19 contact tracing apps as mass surveillance tools, it has emerged. According to a new report released by Amnesty International, the two Gulf states, along with Norway, have released “some of the most invasive COVID-19 contact tracing apps around the world, putting the privacy and security of hundreds of thousands of people at risk.”
In its investigation,...
