Should we worry about the privacy of data with biomedical sensors?

Most patients are comfortable with current privacy protection for medical data, says Lionel Tarassenko, PhD, professor of electrical engineering. In this Ask the Experts video, he explains how the protection is similar to online banking.

Transcript

00:00

So there's a hard core of 5% or 10% of people who will see it as a conspiracy by the government to acquire more data about them.

00:06

And we allow them to opt out. [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:21

It's a much bigger issue, I think, here in the US than in the UK, where we have socialized medicine.

00:28

So we have these questions, nevertheless, in the UK. People are concerned about what happens to their data. But what I tell them--

00:35

I ask a lot of people-- I will ask the people if it's in a conference, how many of them do internet banking? Most people do internet banking.

00:43

And I say, well, we'll provide you the same level of security and one level above because we have three-factor authentication for the use

00:50

and retrieval of this data. So there's a hard core of 5% or 10% of people who will see it as a conspiracy

00:57

by the government to acquire more data about them. And we allow them to opt out. But the great majority are happy with that level of protection.

01:06

And the other thing that we do is we also tell the user of this technology, the people who

01:13

generate the data about their physiology, who will get to see the data. [MUSIC PLAYING]