Ethical Concerns and Solutions in Health Internet of Things

Abstract

Nowadays, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and applications are largely and successfully used in almost every human activity. Together with smart cities and industrial IoT, one of the top three sectors with a notable estimated growth in the years to come is Health Internet of Things (HIoT). Due to obvious benefits as faster response and better functioning of medical devices, remote diagnosis and treatment, continuous monitoring of patients with implanted devices, better support for clinical decisions, and lower costs, IoT is becoming increasingly relevant in the context of health-care and medical applications. In order to provide these advantages, interconnected patient and hospital IoT devices collect, transmit and process significant amounts of sensitive data. Problems as the lack of transparency in the use of data and contextual metadata, weak security methods implemented in medical devices, probability of human errors and software or hardware malfunctions, autonomous, ambiguous and unpredictable behaviour of the interconnected things expose both the health institutions and their clients to significant risks, from harming the privacy of patients to actual health damage. In this spirit, the paper reviews the ethical and security-related concerns in health-IoT and suggests solutions to present and future challenges.

Keywords: Internet of Things, Health Internet of Things, digital ethics, medical information security, health data privacy

JEL Classification: M15, O3