Author

Ellie Young

Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Natural Sciences

First Advisor

Lepinski, Matthew

Area of Concentration

Computer Science

Abstract

This thesis describes a qualitative evaluation of a consent flow for a chatbot being developed by a large U.S. health insurance company. This chatbot’s use of a cloud service provider triggers a requirement for users to agree to a HIPAA Authorization. I interviewed 12 participants about their feelings and understandings regarding the chatbot, HIPAA, and online privacy. I observed that most users in my study, even healthcare privacy experts, missed important information in the authorization even after I asked them to review it again. I also show that many people have a limited understanding of how and where HIPAA protects healthcare data. Given these re- sults, I argue the need for research on alternate approaches to health data disclosures such as standardized disclosures; methods borrowed from clinical research contexts such as multimedia formats, quizzes, and conversational approaches; and automated privacy assistants.

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