Why did the Hackers Love Health Apps

Most of the Hackers Love Health Apps

WASHINGTON – Helpful health apps in your mobile may be exposed to hackers with the access of medical history, your doctor’s name and also your home address. Technology experts are examining the risks at a house hearing July 14 with the Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

The Growth in information technologies in the health care sector has raised the industries hardworking to protect them. A report by IMS Health, a research and service provider for health care experts illustrated more than 165,000 mobile health apps were accessible in 2013.More apps offered access to user’s electronic health records from hospitals or doctor’s.

Hackers especially love the sort of medical data stored in health apps because it is difficult to change. A stolen credit card number can be changed, but medical data and home addresses and social security numbers frequently go to medical record’s – these things are difficult to change and therefore it can change to a higher price on the black market.

Some privacy policies and no regulation

Health apps are most popular, but they are not very private. In the United States, one-fifth people have installed health apps. A report in the March issue of the journal of the American Medical Association in March Yet showed off 271 apps studied, 81 percent are not having privacy policies. In that 19 percent (41 apps) are not having the privacy policies, only four précised that they should ask for permission before contributing the data with third party people.

The data which was collected by the apps will not be sold in time. Health apps are also not dependent on security and privacy regulations in the Health Insurance portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

One expert named Nicolas Terry, who was a law professor in Indiana University Maurer School of Law and expert in health care technologies called for Federal regulatory agencies to step in and create protections for the patient-information apps. By reference of apps where information is straight accessible to users Terry said. That type of direct app-patient relationship requires any professional buffer between the user and the information. As a result, the traditional guideline of quality, safety and confidently suffer.

“Patient privacy should be well concentrating on. The selling of this data must be clearer,” said Diane Johnson, who is director of the Strategic Regulatory at Johnson & Johnson, a multinational medical products and services provider which provides number of mHealth apps. Johnson and others worried that for mHealth app users, it is a case must be careful beyond buyer.

Bettina Experton said that data saved in the individual devices will be safer when compared data saved to clouds. President of Humetrix, a health app developer based in Del Mar, California. User’s information will be “highly secured in personal devices,” said Expert. Your phone can have safe security when it is encrypted. It depends on you and your control.”