Internet of Everything in Healthcare: Reconciling the Risks and Benefits of Data Sharing in IoT-Enabled Telehealth Environments

Abstract

The promise of Internet of Everything in healthcare (‘Internet of Healthcare’) is that Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled devices and concomitant enabling technologies could be used to leverage data concerning health in order to increase medical intelligence and support decisions affecting health. Remote diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of citizens/patients by use of IoT-enabled solutions, and the tracking of citizens/patients along the healthcare continuum could facilitate the transformation of healthcare from a merely reactive system to a data-driven and person-centred system that provides integrated real-time response solutions, as well as prospective insights. Despite the clear advantages, these developments have raised concerns about risks posed by unjustified interferences with privacy and/or illicit access to or improper processing of data concerning health. These concerns stem from the inherent tension that stakeholders in health data ecosystems need to collect, share, access and analyse vast amounts of sensitive data to generate increased value. To overcome these challenges, this research aims to identify lex ferenda measures, state-of-the-art technical tools and good data governance practices, which could be deployed in a European legal context to maximise the benefits and minimise the risks of sharing data concerning health in IoT-enabled telehealth environments.