Evidence map›Paper›PMID 37591261›Full record

ArticleMethods of information in medicine2023

A Proposal for a Robust Validated Weighted General Data Protection Regulation-Based Scale to Assess the Quality of Privacy Policies of Mobile Health Applications: An eDelphi Study.

Jaime Benjumea, Jorge Ropero, Enrique Dorronzoro-Zubiete, Octavio Rivera-Romero, Alejandro Carrasco

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Article in Methods of information in medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

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1citing papers in PubMed
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1 · What the graph read from it

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3 · Its place in the literature

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1 citing paper in PubMed.

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4 · The record

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Jaime BenjumeaDepartment of Electronic Technology, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
Jorge RoperoDepartment of Electronic Technology, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
Enrique Dorronzoro-ZubieteDepartment of Electronic Technology, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
Octavio Rivera-RomeroDepartment of Electronic Technology, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.
Alejandro CarrascoDepartment of Electronic Technology, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundHealth care services are undergoing a digital transformation in which the Participatory Health Informatics field has a key role. Within this field, studies aimed to assess the quality of digital tools, including mHealth apps, are conducted. Privacy is one dimension of the quality of an mHealth app. Privacy consists of several components, including organizational, technical, and legal safeguards. Within legal safeguards, giving transparent information to the users on how their data are handled is crucial. This information is usually disclosed to users through the privacy policy document. Assessing the quality of a privacy policy is a complex task and several scales supporting this process have been proposed in the literature. However, these scales are heterogeneous and even not very objective. In our previous study, we proposed a checklist of items guiding the assessment of the quality of an mHealth app privacy policy, based on the General Data Protection Regulation.

objectiveTo refine the robustness of our General Data Protection Regulation-based privacy scale to assess the quality of an mHealth app privacy policy, to identify new items, and to assign weights for every item in the scale.

methodsA two-round modified eDelphi study was conducted involving a privacy expert panel.

resultsAfter the Delphi process, all the items in the scale were considered "important" or "very important" (4 and 5 in a 5-point Likert scale, respectively) by most of the experts. One of the original items was suggested to be reworded, while eight tentative items were suggested. Only two of them were finally added after Round 2. Eleven of the 16 items in the scale were considered "very important" (weight of 1), while the other 5 were considered "important" (weight of 0.5).

conclusionThe Benjumea privacy scale is a new robust tool to assess the quality of an mHealth app privacy policy, providing a deeper and complementary analysis to other scales. Also, this robust scale provides a guideline for the development of high-quality privacy policies of mHealth apps.

Indexed as

Mobile ApplicationsTelemedicineComputer SecurityPolicyPrivacy

Identifiers

PMID37591261
PMCPMC10878744

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