Improved privacy for children's wristband scheme

A scheme to give children in Guernsey wristbands to monitor and improve their health will benefit from tighter privacy rules, the island's data protection authority has said.

The Office of the Data Protection Authority (ODPA) worked with Guernsey's Health Improvement Commission (HIC) and the wristband's manufacturer to check privacy safeguards were strong enough and improve transparency.

HIC worked with UK manufacture Moki to give wristbands to schoolchildren in Guernsey to "track children’s activity levels towards improving their wellbeing", the ODPA said.

Brent Homan, Guernsey's data protection commissioner, said: "By its very nature, children’s personal information is sensitive and this sensitivity is further heightened by the fact we are dealing with health-related data."

He said the initiative was "clearly of high social benefit", adding that he was "extremely impressed" with HIC's approach to privacy.

The OPDA said it was satisfied with the safeguards the manufacturer, Moki, had in place but worked with it to "improve the transparency" of its communications.

It also said it had asked HIC and Moki to make sure parents had to actively opt in to their children using the programme, rather than the original policy of making them opt out.

Moki provides wristbands to children at more than 1,500 schools in the UK.

Mr Moman said: "We are pleased to see Moki's high safeguard standards for a technology associated with the data of children and their commitment to transparency improvements that will not only benefit users in Guernsey but across the UK."

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