Wearable Devices and Measurement Data: An Empirical Study on eHealth and Data Sharing

The development of medical applications and services is growing but is hampered by security and privacy concerns and a lack of trust by users. This interview study with 29 users of wearable devices reports perspectives on privacy concerns towards sharing of measured data in general, and measured stress data in the workplace. Participants consider stress data to be sensitive (73%), and report that privacy protection is a requirement for both the technology and the workplace. Sharing behavior is shown to be strongly coupled with clear purposes and incentives. Sharing measured fitness data is accepted (72%), and sharing stress measured data for the common good (48%), despite privacy concerns. Over half mistrust the technology not to leak data. Technology solutions should provide clear and sound purposes for storing, sharing, and processing measured data, as well as provide assurances from workplace and cloud.