October 4th, 2022, Bhavika Bansal
More and more consumers continue to recognise the usefulness and convenience of healthcare apps in monitoring and self-managing medical conditions and wellness. This burgeoning market is, however, particularly vulnerable to data breaches owing to the personally identifiable and sensitive information the apps collect, track and store. In fact, many mHealth (mobile health) apps, especially reproductive trackers, have lately been riddled with recurring concerns over ‘misleading’ data-sharing policies.
With privacy and security concerns growing, this recent YouGov poll asks consumers across 18 global markets their opinion on the importance of data security when choosing apps that track and store any health data – fitness apps, dieting apps, period tracking apps, etc.
Data reveals that data security is important to more than three-quarters of global consumers (76%) - a sentiment shared across most regions. Less than a tenth of global consumers (8%) say that data security is not important to their choice of health app.
In the European region, data security is important to more consumers in Spain (83%) than the global average, but this number drops to two-thirds of consumers in Denmark (69%) and Sweden (66%). While three out of five German consumers (65%) say they are concerned about data security, the country leads in the number of consumers (13%) who are not concerned.
Much like in Spain, more than four-fifths of consumers in Mexico (86%), Indonesia (83%), UAE (82%) and India (81%) are concerned about data security.
Interestingly, a quarter of consumers in Hong Kong (24%) and Sweden (23%) say that data security is neither important nor unimportant for them when choosing apps that tracks or stores their health data. But this data shows that for the overwhelming majority, privacy and data security remain an essential factor.
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Methodology: The data is based on the interviews of adults aged 18 and over in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 513 and 2,008 for each market. All interviews were conducted online in May 2022. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples.