Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to their obesity strategy which recommends the use of digital technologies for the monitoring of weight loss and lifestyle improvements, what steps they will take to protect personal data collected by fitness trackers and apps.

Public Health England (PHE) digital products complete a Data Protection Impact Assessment. This assessment is reviewed by their Data Protection Officers prior to launch to ensure the processing complies with the requirements of data protection law. ?

PHE stores information such as weight, age, sex and ethnic group in the Weight Loss App but PHE does not store any personally identifiable information.

On Monday 27 July, PHE launched an adult health campaign, ‘Better Health’, encouraging adults to kick start their health by losing weight, eating better and getting active.

The campaign directs people to a variety of free tools and apps including the 12-week NHS Weight Loss Plan, Couch to 5k, Active10 and Easy Meals. These tools were reviewed ahead of the campaign launch and approved by PHE Data Protection Officers.