Google Glass and Health Care: Initial Legal and Ethical Questions

Physicians and some hospitals have exhibited considerable enthusiasm for the implementation of Google Glass in the healthcare environment. However, current uses of Google Glass for data display, recording and transmitting, or data storage raise several challenging ethical and legal questions. Some of the innovative uses of Glass may raise as yet unmeasured risks such as distraction. More concretely, Glass users face informed consent requirements and legal and ethical limits on recording patients even for educational purposes. Most seriously, Glass is not yet HIPAA compliant (although some apps developed for it are). Some uses of Glass will therefore be subject to privacy and security constraints. The authors describe the issues raised by Glass in detail and recommend some initial risk-management strategies.

Keywords: Enhanced reality, privacy, consent, health information technology

JEL Classification: K10, K32

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Terry, Nicolas P. and Priest, Chad and Szotek, Paul, Google Glass and Health Care: Initial Legal and Ethical Questions (April 7, 2015). J. Health & Life Sci. L., Feb. 2015 at 93, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Research Paper No. 2015-20, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2591365