Elgujja, AA, Arimoro, Augustine ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8698-9328, Alshahrani, FS, Elgujja, AAE and Ezreqat, S (2024) Mobile apps for health surveillance: Balancing public health needs with the privacy of personal data. Journal of Infrastructure, Policy and Development, 8 (11). p. 5703. ISSN 2572-7923

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Abstract

The privacy of personal information is aimed at protecting human rights both under
the international human rights regime and the Saudi Arabian constitution and other statutes and
regulations, subject only to some exceptions that include the protection of public health. The
coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has brought about certain challenges that
necessitate strategies to augment the conventional surveillance of infectious diseases, contact
tracing, isolation, reporting and vaccination. Several governments institutions, and agencies
presently adopt mobile applications for collecting, analyzing, managing, and sharing critical
personal data of individuals infected with or exposed to COVID-19. While the benefits of
sharing private information for achieving public health needs may not be disputed, the risk of
breach of personal privacy is enormous. This had forced the national governments into a
dilemma of either succumbing to public health needs, strictly respecting and protecting the
privacy of individuals, or alternatively, balancing the two conflicting demands. There is a
massive body of literature on the security and privacy of such mobile applications, but none
has adequately explored and discussed public interest justifications under Saudi Arabian laws
for alleged privacy breaches. We examined the health surveillance mobile app technologies
currently in use in Saudi Arabia with the aim of determining the potential risks of data breaches
under extant data protection laws. The paper recommends, among others, that any potential
risk of breach to right to privacy of personal information under the law must be (justified by)
the public health needs to protect society during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Item Type:	Article
Identifier:	10.24294/jipd.v8i11.5703
Subjects:	Medicine and health > Health promotion and public health Law and criminal justice > Law
Depositing User:	Dr Augustine Arimoro
Date Deposited:	21 Nov 2024 11:38
Last Modified:	21 Nov 2024 11:45
URI:	https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/12914

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