There is No App for This!

Introduction

With the dramatic increase in the collection of health data, health apps have been promoted as offering major advances for people in the Global South, but they also pose risks to privacy and, ultimately, to health outcomes. There is No App for This! analyses the regulation of health apps in Africa.

As an implementing partner, ADiJUST works with the University of Warwick and other partners to evaluate data protection regimes and engage stakeholders in Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda, establishing the extent to which they protect citizens’ health data, especially in cross-border health activities.

Focusing on law, bioethics, entrepreneurship, epidemiology, and policymakers, the project brings stakeholders together to empirically investigate how health apps operate in practice, whether new forms of regulation are adequate, and how better regulatory frameworks can be created.

Community outreach

In collaboration with the University of Warwick, CIPESA, and Africa CDC, ADiJUST has convened community outreach engaging young people in underserved urban communities in Uganda, enhancing awareness of digital health rights, data governance, privacy, and accountability, and informing evidence-based policy including the Africa CDC Model Law on Health Data Governance.

Objectives

1. To empirically research and document the practice of health apps in Africa and how African governments are protecting health app users’ data.
2. To examine how different stakeholders perceive the regulatory frameworks for the migration of health data and enhance their capacities for digital health data protection.
3. To contribute to the development of a conceptual framework for decolonizing the migration of digital health data from Africa.
4. To co-create better regulatory frameworks to protect health app users in Africa.