Exercising Privacy: Policy Options for Privacy and Wellness Wearables

Springboard’s Alannah Dharamshi and Adrienne Lipsey on the unique privacy risks posed by wellness wearables.

Wellness wearables are playing a growing role in the lives of Canadians. Manufacturers of these devices and their associated apps are promising a future world of enhanced well-being by enabling users to keep track of and take action on their health and wellness goals.

However, wellness wearables are distinct from other emerging technologies in that they directly connect to the body, generating a high volume of health-related information. They are also of increasing interest to stakeholders beyond consumers and are being applied in contexts where there are power asymmetries and potential misuses. Employers have been incorporating wellness wearables at work, making monitoring more intrusive and continuous. Insurers have also been keen to leverage the real-time data that these devices can generate about policyholders.

Despite these unique aspects of wellness wearables, there has been limited policy development in this area. Instead, these types of devices occupy a regulatory grey area. As neither medical devices nor low-stakes consumer products, wellness wearables are generally excluded from medical regulations and health privacy laws, and they are not sufficiently provided for under consumer privacy laws. Policymakers urgently need to collaborate with industry and civil society to address this gap and implement effective interventions for privacy. If left unaddressed, this will have profound implications as next generation wellness wearables establish even deeper connections to the body, with greater implications for privacy.