Meta Glasses in Nursing Homes and Long-term Care Facilities

CANHR has become aware of the expanding use of Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses in healthcare settings, which raises serious concerns about privacy and surveillance. The glasses themselves provide hands-free access to photo and video, livestreaming capabilities, and an integrated AI assistant. With a simple voice command, like, “Meta, start recording,” a person can capture the entirety of their day on video whilst simultaneously feeding that footage into the glasses’ AI companion. 

This technology poses a direct threat to the privacy of long-term care residents. Staff can record, intent or not, private patient information and intimate moments between caregivers and residents without consent. Unfortunately, there’s no clear indicator of when recording is in progress – just a small, white light. Not only can the already hard-to-identify indicator be covered with something like a sticker, many residents may not even be aware of the technology and its capabilities. This is a direct erosion of patient trust. Residents with dementia or who are cognitively impaired are particularly vulnerable. Oftentimes, they can’t consent to being recorded, object in the moment, or report it afterward. That combination makes the privacy concerns within nursing homes and long-term care facilities unique from other settings. 

Residents at several facilities across the state have reported staff, including nurses, wearing the glasses and refusing to remove them upon request. In some cases, staff have recorded video with the glasses in areas that contain residents’ protected health information without obtaining prior consent. Nancy Stevens, a facility resident and long-time activist, told CANHR, “I’ve had to tell staff multiple times to take off their glasses before entering my room. I had to put up a sign on the door.” These reports are going largely ignored, with one facility emphasizing that no action will be taken. These glasses, in most instances, are not prescription, meaning there is no explicit need for the user to wear them for medical purposes. 

Tips for Protecting Your Privacy

If you’re worried about Meta glasses violating your right to privacy, here are a few suggestions: 

• Familiarize yourself with the appearance of Meta glasses. You can find examples of the official design on Meta or Ray-Ban’s official store page. When the glasses are recording, there will be a small, white LED light shining on the inside corner of the frame, opposite of the camera’s lens. 
   
• Request that staff remove their Meta glasses, or confirm that they are not recording, before beginning patient care. 
   
• If your facility has one, consider bringing the issue up at a resident council meeting. Residents can decide collectively whether to raise the issue to the administration as a group. 

What to Do if Your Privacy Was Violated

If you believe you’ve been recorded without your consent, there are several strategies that you can use to advocate for yourself, including:

• Emphasize that you don’t consent to being recorded. Nursing home residents have the right to refuse being recorded, as under federal regulations, they’re guaranteed the right to personal privacy. If they continue to record you, file an internal complaint and inform the facility’s nursing director or administration. 
   
• Contact your local Ombudsman to help advocate for your privacy rights. 
   
• File a complaint with the California Department of Public Health (CDPH). If you’ve already filed an internal complaint with your facility, and it was ignored or the issue persists, you can file a complaint with CDPH to have the matter investigated. 
   
• Contact your local law enforcement agency and the state Attorney General’s Division of Medi-Cal Fraud and Elder Abuse, since recording voice and video without notice and consent can be a crime.

How Can I Help Advocate for Better Solutions?

This issue requires proactive measures to make sure that the privacy of nursing home and long-term care facility residents is not threatened in the future. Informing legislators is a great step, as they play a crucial role in shaping public policy and, in this case, protecting vulnerable nursing home residents from further harm. Contact your legislators to let them know that the presence of Meta glasses in nursing homes poses a severe risk to the privacy of residents, and urge them to forward policy changes that protect it.