Academic paper summary

The scholarly journal article titled 'Ethical Guidelines for Mobile App Development Within Health and Mental Health Fields' talks about the rapid acceleration of mobile health applications in the health industry and the lack of existing guidelines for them. The article explores the dangers of storing individual's health related information online and proposed that password protection should be a standard procedure. It also raised the issue of absence of government policies on mobile health app development, which are being developed at a concerning speed. Jones and Moffitt (2016) in the article suggest that one of those policies should include storing private information on a cloud server that is routinely backed up in case of a disaster. They also mention that offline functions should be implemented to protect sensitive information from the dangers of the internet. The article concludes by saying that the increase of mobile health apps is unavoidable in the mental health field, due to their accessibility and usefulness and the responsibility of patient protection lies on researchers and clinicians.

 

References:

Jones, N. and Moffitt, M., 2016. Ethical guidelines for mobile app development within health and mental health fields. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 47(2), p.155.