Health data privacy is essential for the acceptance of digital health applications. Hence, privacy is a precondition for future healthcare delivery. This study compares the perception of the current state of health data privacy in officially registered and therefore regulated health applications (medical devices) according to the medical product act as well as non-regulated health applications (devices with medical functionality) in Germany. To this end, an empirical study based on a questionnaire is conducted (n=53). The results show that there are significant differences between the analysed health applications with respect to perceived data privacy. In particular, there is a significant difference of the levels of perceived security between both types of devices. Low privacy for one type of device may hamper trust in digital health applications in general as there are spill-over effects regarding the perception of data privacy. Thus, the study suggests that legal regulations for devices with medical functionality should be adapted to protect health data adequately.
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Kaiser et al. (2020) studied this question.