Emerging Challenges of Smart Wearable Devices: Enhancing Personal Health Information Protection in China

Abstract

The widespread popularity of smart wearable devices has brought convenience to personal health management, but it has also raised challenges in the protection of personal health information security. This paper conducts research by comprehensively applying methods such as literature collection, empirical analysis, and comparative law research. Through a questionnaire survey, it is found that different groups have different understandings of personal information protection under smart wearable technology, and there are many problems in aspects such as information collection consent and anonymization processing. Meanwhile, the research points out that personal health information under smart wearable technology faces risks such as unnoticed information leakage risks, difficulties in controlling information uses that lead to rights and interest’s crises, and doubts about the effectiveness of anonymization processing. There are also dilemmas in legal definition, legislation, supervision, and judicial practice. Therefore, it is recommended to incorporate smart wearable devices into medical device supervision and establish a certification mechanism, implement the dynamic consent rule based on the purpose of information processing, promote algorithm transparency, and improve the tort liability system, so as to build a protection system for personal health information and achieve a win-win situation between the development of smart wearable technology and the protection of personal rights and interests.