Governance mechanisms for healthcare apps

Konstantinos Manikas, Klaus Marius Hansen, Morten Kyng

Abstract

The introduction of the 'app store' concept has challenged the way software is distributed and marketed: developers have easier access to customers, while customers have easy access to innovative applications. Apps today are increasingly focusing on more "mission-critical" areas like healthcare with the Apple AppStore counting more than 40,000 apps under the category "health & fitness". This rapid development of healthcare apps increases the necessity of governance as, currently, healthcare apps are not thoroughly governed. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Commission only have policies for apps that are medical devices. In this paper, we approach the problem of how to govern healthcare and medical apps by addressing the risks the use of these apps pose, while at the same time inviting for development of new apps. To do so we (i) analyze four cases of healthcare app governance/regulation, (ii) propose the analysis of the app governance from three perspectives: aim, impact, and revenues, (iii) apply the proposed analysis in the app of the healthcare domain, and (iv) identify the governing actors and propose governance policies.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 2014 European Conference on Software Architecture Workshops
Number of pages6
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Publication date2014
Pages10:1-10:6
Article number10
ISBN (Print)978-1-4503-2778-7
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
EventEuropean Conference on Software Architecture Workshops - University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Duration: 25 Aug 201429 Aug 2014

Conference

ConferenceEuropean Conference on Software Architecture Workshops
LocationUniversity of Vienna
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityVienna
Period25/08/201429/08/2014

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