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,...
UK CONTACT TRACING APP SWITCH
In a major U-turn, the UK is switching from its existing centralised contact tracing app to the technology provided by Google and Apple.
At the Downing Street briefing, health secretary, Matt Hancock said the new app is months from being ready however said the government would not “put a date” on when the app will be launched.
In a joint statement from Baroness Dido...
(Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Scores of startups, health systems and even governments have scrambled to address COVID-19 by creating new digital tools for patients. However, these tools may have some gaps when it comes to securing users' privacy data, according to a report by newly formed group the International Digital Accountability Council (IDAC).
The organization, which is made up of lawyers, technologists and privacy...
A large portion of COVID-19 apps available in the Google Play Store ask users for advanced access permissions, but very few indicate to users that collected data will be made anonymous and secured, according to an analysis of 50 such apps published recently in Nature Medicine.
The investigation – conducted by two researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Illinois...
