Geolocation
This week’s topic
Geolocation. Also known as geopositioning, in the context of mobile devices it is most commonly called geolocation, which is “the process of determining or estimating the geographic position of an object”. Geographic position amounts to a latitude and longitude pair, where the latitude is the north-south or Y coordinate and the longitude is the east-west or X coordinate. Feature image provided by WhatIsMyIpAddress.
Why geolocation
Tracking the geolocation of application users has become increasingly important. For healthcare apps the use cases are many, such as:
- Knowing when your users are leaving their homes
- Knowing when users are nearby certain locations such as hospitals or care centers
- Knowing the patterns of movement for users
Geolocation data can be a primary driver of product workflows, for example, if you detect that a user is not moving your product could raise an alarm. Alternatively, geolocation data can provide context, which can make your product workflows more relevant and effective.
Geolocation functionality can be added into any mobile app – Android or iOS. Typically, geolocation functionality requires additional app permissions. Furthermore, storing and manipulating geolocation data in your database can require additional modules. For example, to use geolocation in PostgreSQL requires the PostGIS module to be installed.
Geolocation tracking can negatively impact battery life on mobile devices. It is important to think through how your app will capture user geolocations and which level of accuracy is required for your product workflows. Typically, the more accurate the geolocation samples, the greater the battery utilization.
Lastly, geolocation tracking has important effects on user privacy. Your app most likely already deals with Personal Identifiable Information (PII) and potentially Protected Health Information (PHI). Geolocation data, in the context of PII, would be considered an “indirect identifier”. Whether or not geolocation data would be considered PHI depends on product workflows. Before writing any code and changing your product workflows, it is recommended to walk through your product design ideas for geolocation with legal counsel to understand what impacts, if any, it might have in regards to PII, PHI and HIPAA. You will also want to discuss with your legal counsel if an update to the privacy policy and terms and conditions for your app is required.
Up next
Geofencing