Privacy Concerns in the Use of Instant Messaging Apps in Healthcare: a Systematic Review

Instant messaging applications are an integral part of everyday life, facilitating communication in various settings, including work and healthcare. This systematic review aims to analyze the healthcare contexts in which these applications are most commonly used (i.e., work organization, education, communication among healthcare personnel, communication with patients), with a particular focus on privacy issues raised by the handling of sensitive data on these platforms and how, or if, these issues are addressed. Following a systematic literature review process conducted according to PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines, the articles were examined with the goal of extracting the aforementioned information. The results reveal that the majority of studies (82.6%) adopt commercial solutions to improve communication in medical field, with most of them using WhatsApp as the primary communication channel. Although the studies acknowledge the privacy risks introduced by these applications, the description of how such risks are mitigated or addressed is rarely reported in detail; what is consistently highlighted instead is the practical lack of clarity in existing regulations about the pratical applicability.