Challenges and Potential Opportunities of Mobile Phone Call Detail Records in Health Research: Review

BACKGROUND Call detail records (CDRs) are collected by mobile network operators in the course of providing their service. CDRs are increasingly being used in research along with other forms of big data and represent an emerging data type with potential for public good. Many jurisdictions have infrastructures for health data research that could benefit from the integration of CDRs with health data. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to review how CDRs have been used in health research and to identify challenges and potential opportunities for their wider use in conjunction with health data. METHODS A literature review was conducted using structured search terms making use of major search engines. Initially, 4066 items were identified. Following screening, 46 full text articles were included in the qualitative synthesis. Information extracted included research topic area, population of study, datasets used, information governance and ethical considerations, study findings, and data limitations. RESULTS The majority of published studies were focused on low-income and middle-income countries. Making use of the location element in CDRs, studies often modeled the transmission of infectious diseases or estimated population movement following natural disasters with a view to implementing interventions. CDRs were used in anonymized or aggregated form, and the process of gaining regulatory approvals varied with data provider and by jurisdiction. None included public views on the use of CDRs in health research. CONCLUSIONS Despite various challenges and limitations, anonymized mobile phone CDRs have been used successfully in health research. The use of aggregated data is a safeguard but also a further limitation. Greater opportunities could be gained if validated anonymized CDRs were integrated with routine health records at an individual level, provided that permissions and safeguards could be put in place. Further work is needed, including gaining public views, to develop an ethically founded framework for the use of CDRs in health research.

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Public Views on Using Mobile Phone Call Detail Records in Health Research: Qualitative Study (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.11730 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Kerina Helen Jones ◽

Helen Daniels ◽

Sharon Heys ◽

David Vincent Ford

Keyword(s):

Mobile Phone ◽

Disease Transmission ◽

Health Research ◽

Phone Call ◽

Data Governance ◽

Multinational Organizations ◽

Initial Questionnaire ◽

Final Questionnaire ◽

Public Views ◽

Call Detail Records

BACKGROUND Mobile phone call detail records (CDRs) are increasingly being used in health research. The location element in CDRs is used in various health geographic studies, for example, to track population movement and infectious disease transmission. Vast volumes of CDRs are held by multinational organizations, which may make them available for research under various data governance regimes. However, there is an identified lack of public engagement on using CDRs for health research to contribute to an ethically founded framework. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to explore public views on the use of call detail records in health research. METHODS Views on using CDRs in health research were gained via a series of three public workshops (N=61) informed by a pilot workshop of 25 people. The workshops included an initial questionnaire to gauge participants’ prior views, discussion on health research using CDRs, and a final questionnaire to record workshop outcome views. The resulting data were analyzed for frequencies and emerging themes. RESULTS At the outset, most participants (66%, 40/61) knew that location data were collected by operators, but only 3% (2/61) knew they were being used for health research. Initially, the majority of the participants (62%, 38/61) was content for their anonymous CDRs to be used, and this increased (80%, 49/61) after the discussion explained that safeguards were in place. Participants highlighted that terms and conditions should be clearer, as should information to phone users on data collection, privacy safeguards, sharing, and uses in research. CONCLUSIONS This is the first known study exploring public views of using mobile phone CDRs in health research. It revealed a lack of knowledge among the public on uses of CDRs and indicated that people are generally amenable to the use of anonymized data for research, but they want to be properly informed and safeguarded. We recommend that public views be incorporated into an ethically founded framework for the use of CDRs in health research to promote awareness and social acceptability in data use.

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Toward an Ethically Founded Framework for the Use of Mobile Phone Call Detail Records in Health Research

JMIR mhealth and uhealth ◽

10.2196/11969 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (3) ◽

pp. e11969 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kerina Helen Jones ◽

Helen Daniels ◽

Sharon Heys ◽

David Vincent Ford

Keyword(s):

Mobile Phone ◽

Health Research ◽

Phone Call ◽

Call Detail Records

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Toward an Ethically Founded Framework for the Use of Mobile Phone Call Detail Records in Health Research (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.11969 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Kerina Helen Jones ◽

Helen Daniels ◽

Sharon Heys ◽

David Vincent Ford

Keyword(s):

Mobile Phone ◽

Health Research ◽

Significant Risk ◽

Control Measures ◽

Phone Call ◽

Social Acceptability ◽

Data Governance ◽

Public Benefit ◽

Public Views ◽

Call Detail Records

UNSTRUCTURED Data derived from the plethora of networked digital devices hold great potential for public benefit. Among these, mobile phone call detail records (CDRs) present novel opportunities for research and are being used in a variety of health geography studies. Research suggests that the public is amenable to the use of anonymized CDRs for research; however, further work is needed to show that such data can be used appropriately. This study works toward an ethically founded data governance framework with social acceptability. Using a multifaceted approach, this study draws upon data governance arrangements in published health research using CDRs, with a consideration of public views and the public’s information expectations from mobile network operators, and data use scenarios of CDRs in health research. The findings were considered against a backdrop of legislative and regulatory requirements. CDRs can be used at various levels of data and geographic granularity and may be integrated with additional, publicly available or restricted datasets. As such, there may be a significant risk of identity disclosure, which must be mitigated with proportionate control measures. An indicative relative risk of the disclosure model is proposed to aid this process. Subsequently, a set of recommendations is presented, including the need for greater transparency, accountability, and incorporation of public views for social acceptability. This study addresses the need for greater clarity and consistency in data governance for CDRs in health research. While recognizing the need to protect commercial interests, we propose that these recommendations be used to contribute toward an ethically founded practical framework to promote the safe, socially acceptable use of CDR data for public benefit. This pattern needs to be repeated for the appropriate use of new and emerging data types from other networking devices and the wider internet of things.

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Public Views on Using Mobile Phone Call Detail Records in Health Research: Qualitative Study

JMIR mhealth and uhealth ◽

10.2196/11730 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. e11730 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kerina Helen Jones ◽

Helen Daniels ◽

Sharon Heys ◽

David Vincent Ford

Keyword(s):

Qualitative Study ◽

Mobile Phone ◽

Health Research ◽

Phone Call ◽

Public Views ◽

Call Detail Records

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A hierarchical approach for identifying user activity patterns from mobile phone call detail records

2015 International Conference on Networking Systems and Security (NSysS) ◽

10.1109/nsyss.2015.7043535 ◽

2015 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Fahim Hasan Khan ◽

Mohammed Eunus Ali ◽

Himel Dev

Keyword(s):

Mobile Phone ◽

Activity Patterns ◽

Phone Call ◽

Hierarchical Approach ◽

User Activity ◽

Call Detail Records

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Understanding monthly variability in human activity spaces: A twelve-month study using mobile phone call detail records

Transportation Research Part C Emerging Technologies ◽

10.1016/j.trc.2013.11.003 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 38 ◽

pp. 122-135 ◽

Cited By ~ 111

Author(s):

Olle Järv ◽

Rein Ahas ◽

Frank Witlox

Keyword(s):

Mobile Phone ◽

Human Activity ◽

Phone Call ◽

Activity Spaces ◽

Call Detail Records

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Mobile Phone Tower Tracking

Tracking Tourists ◽

10.23912/9781911635383-4564 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Anne Hardy

Keyword(s):

Mobile Phone ◽

Travel Behaviour ◽

Text Messages ◽

Phone Call ◽

Mobile Phone Data ◽

Data Sets ◽

Travel Patterns ◽

Mobile Phone Use ◽

Time Space ◽

Call Detail Records

Tracking tourists using mobile phone data involves collating mobile phone call detail records (CDR), that can determine travel patterns of mobile phone users. The size of the data involved in this style of research is enormous; Xiao, Wang, and Fang (2019) received 600 – 800 million records per day when they used mobile phone data from Shanghai, resulting in over 10 billion mobile phone trajectories. However, mobile phone data does not provide precise travel itineraries. Rather, the data is a series of time-space points, showing where mobile phone users were when they made or received calls or text messages. Inferences are required to determine which mobile phone users are tourists, and when they entered countries or regions. However, the ubiquity of mobile phone use and the size of the data sets available to researchers means that this form of data can be used as a proxy for accommodation and visitation (Xiao, Wang, and Fang, 2019; Ahas et al., 2008; Ahas et al., 2007). Many significant findings regarding travel behaviour have emerged from this technique, including understandings of the impacts of seasonality, the impacts of nationality, and the impacts of events. This chapter will review these findings as well as the challenges that arise from the use of this data.

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