article · Informatics
Smart wearable technologies continuously generate wearable health data, offering opportunities for remote monitoring, predictive analytics, and digitally mediated care. Integrating this information into routine and clinical healthcare requires governance beyond traditional health data protocols. An examination of perceptions among wearable users and health professionals in South Africa reveals distinct viewpoints. Wearable users generally express confidence in data access, reliability, trust, accuracy, and sharing, displaying limited concern regarding privacy and third-party practices. However, users show uncertainty regarding data security and the adequacy of existing South African legislation. Conversely, health professionals approach wearable data governance with caution, highlighting concerns around regulatory adequacy, data quality, security, accountability, and the standards required for meaningful healthcare integration. Effective governance must therefore extend beyond statutory regulation to ensure intelligibility, credibility, quality assurance, and practical oversight.
Wearable devices offer significant potential for preventative and remote healthcare, but clinical adoption depends on trust and compliance. Understanding the differing perspectives of patients and medical professionals highlights critical gaps between public confidence and clinical caution. Addressing concerns around data quality, security, and statutory oversight is essential for integrating personal health data safely and meaningfully into established medical systems.
This research provides early-stage empirical insight relevant to digital health developers, medical technology firms, and healthcare organisations seeking to integrate wearable devices into clinical practice. To achieve market adoption by healthcare professionals, commercial wearable platforms and mHealth services must address clinical demands for robust data quality assurance, clear security protocols, and verifiable accountability mechanisms, rather than relying solely on user enthusiasm or baseline regulatory compliance.
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Personal health management and clinical health systems are increasingly being transformed by data-driven smart technologies that enable remote monitoring, predictive analytics, and digitally mediated care. Wearable technologies contribute to this transformation by continuously generating wearable health data (WHD), but integrating such data into routine and clinical health management raises governance requirements beyond those for traditional health data. This study examines perceptions of WHD governance among wearable users and health professionals in South Africa. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, with quantitative and qualitative data collected through questionnaires and interviews. The findings show that wearable users are generally confident in WHD governance regarding access, reliability, trust, accuracy, and sharing. Privacy and third-party data practices raised comparatively less concern, though with less certainty, while perceptions of security and the adequacy of current South African laws were less definite and marked more by uncertainty. Health professionals viewed WHD governance more cautiously, emphasising regulatory adequacy, data quality, security, accountability, and the conditions required for meaningful use of WHD in health management. The study concludes that effective WHD governance requires more than formal regulation and must also support intelligibility, credibility, quality assurance, and practical oversight to support the responsible integration of WHD into health management.
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DOI: 10.3390/informatics13090141
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