Chicago-Kent team authors JAMA study on diabetes apps

In a widely publicized study appearing in the March 8 issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, a research team from Chicago-Kent's Institute for Science, Law and Technology examined the privacy policies and practices of Android diabetes apps and reported that they came up short. 

"This study demonstrated that diabetes apps shared information with third parties, posing privacy risks because there are no federal legal protections against the sale or disclosure of data from medical apps to third parties," wrote the authors, all of whom were affiliated with Chicago-Kent when they wrote the study.

"Patients might mistakenly believe that health information entered into an app is private (particularly if the app has a privacy policy), but that generally is not the case," the authors wrote.

The paper was authored by Sarah Blenner '11, Melanie Köllmer, Adam Rouse, Nadia Daneshvar, Curry Williams and Professor Lori Andrews. Its publication was covered by news outlets around the world, including Reuters, CBS News, the Times of London, Politico, El Paìs, Live Science, Fox News and U.S. News & World Report.