Should We Better Stick to Pen and Paper? An Empirical Investigation on Functionality, Privacy and Data-Security of Physiotherapy Telehealth Applications

Background: Telehealth and mHealth apps become increasingly popular in health professions such as physiotherapy calling for increased awareness on functionality, privacy, and data security. Objectives: This work presents a functionality, privacy, and data-security evaluation of four telehealth services commonly used in physiotherapy. Methods: We examined functionality and features, data protection, privacy implementations and data-security with a questionnaire and performed an in-depth investigation of the services. Results: Privacy and security relevant findings such as use of outdated webservers, problems with certificate renewal as well as questionable GDPR compliance were reported. Conclusion: Due to the privacy and security relevant findings in this analysis it can be concluded that there is a need for improvement in design, development, operation as well as regulation of telehealth apps and services.