Evaluating the Privacy Policies of Mobile Personal Health Records for Pregnancy Monitoring

A mobile personal health record (mPHR) for pregnancy monitoring allows the pregnant woman to track and manage her personal health data. However, owing to the privacy and security issues that may threaten the exchange of this sensitive data, a privacy policy should be established. The aim of this study is to evaluate the privacy policies of 19 mPHRs for pregnancy monitoring (12 for iOS and 7 for Android) using a template covering the characteristics of privacy, security, and standards and regulations. The findings of this study show that none of the privacy policies evaluated entirely comply with the characteristics studied. The developers of mPHRs for pregnancy monitoring are, therefore, requested to improve and pay more attention to the structure and the content of the privacy policies of their apps.