Privacy of Wearable Electronics in the Healthcare and Childcare Sectors: A Survey of Personal Perspectives from Finland and the United Kingdom

Johanna Virkki, Rebecca Aggarwal

Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland.
School of Engineering Systems and Management, Aston University, Birmingham, UK.

DOI: 10.4236/jis.2014.52005                

Abstract

The innovative development of Wearable Electronics (WE) is creating exciting opportunities for application across many industries. Two sectors with high potential are healthcare and childcare. However, it is in these two sectors where the challenges of privacy are presumed to be of the highest. In order to ascertain the personal views of people about potential privacy problems in WE application in these two sectors, interviews with questionnaires were conducted in two different countries: Finland and the United Kingdom (UK). The results indicated that the majority of people in both countries are positive about the use of WE in healthcare and childcare environments. However, when more information is added to be read wirelessly, the attitudes become more negative. In general, the application of WE is more favorable in the UK and the reason as to the difference will make for interesting further research. Several interesting viewpoints and concerns were presented in the interviews. It can be concluded that the implementation of WE in these two sectors will require the collaboration of work on several areas and the development of versatile user studies.

Keywords

Childcare; Healthcare; Privacy; Wearable Electronics

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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