Personal Location as Health-Related Data: Public Knowledge, Public Concern, and Personal Action

Personal health information (PHI), including health status and behaviors, are often associated with personal locations. Smart devices and other technologies routinely collect personal location. Therefore, technologies collecting personal location do not just create generic questions of privacy, but specific concerns related to PHI.

To assess public opinion on the relationship between health, personal location, and privacy, a national survey of US residents was administered online in March 2020. Respondents answered questions about their use of smart devices and knowledge of location tracking. They also identified which of the locations they could visit were most private and how to balance possibilities that locations may be private but can also be useful to share.

Of respondents that used smart devices (n = 688), a majority (71.1%) indicated they knew they had applications tracking their location, with respondents who were younger (P < .001) and male (P = .002) and with more education (P = .045) more likely to indicate "yes." When all respondents (N = 828) identified the locations on a hypothetical map they felt were most private, health-related locations (substance use treatment center, hospital, urgent care) were the most selected.

The historical notion of PHI is no longer adequate and the public need greater education on how data from smart devices may be used to predict health status and behaviors. The COVID-19 pandemic brought increased attention to personal location as a tool for public health. Given healthcare's dependence upon trust, the field needs to lead the conversation and be viewed as protecting privacy while usefully leveraging location data.