ENISA (The European Network and Information Security Agency) has issued a report presenting major potential Emerging and Future Risks (EFR) concerning remote health monitoring. The report comes after an EFR assessment based on scenario building and analysis. The e-health scenario was developed and analysedby an international group of interdisciplinary experts.
The report identifies 14 risks including breaches of data protection legislation, mission creep (meaning secondary use of data), intrusive data surveillance and profiling by insurance companies, employers, credit-checking companies, etc, data loss or theft, system failures and service disruption. And the general conclusion is that a cautionary approach to e-health applications is the best option. “Caution seems to be the prudent answer at this point: the benefits are clear, but also the risks entailed cannot be ignored”.
