Posted by psych chat on October 31, 2009, at 1:00:00
One can imagine potential disastrous scenarios, both personal and professional, that could occur if medical information or a person's personal seemingly "anonymous" online health surfing habits, e-mail messages, or confidential medical records were made public. Insurance companies could hire online medical information brokers to obtain medical information on policyholders and use this information to deny coverage or claims. Potential employers could use information brokers to obtain health information and health-Web-site (eg, cancer, AIDS, herpes, suicide, alcohol, and depression Web sites) surfing habits on current or potential employees and use this information to fire or not employ a person.....
Medical websites, more than any other type of site on the Internet, should ensure visitors' personal privacy and prevent personal medical information, including patterns of use and interests, from being sold, purchased, or inadvertently entering the hands of marketers, employers, and insurers....Principles Governing AMA Web Sites [14]
-How visitors' privacy, security, and confidentiality should be ensured when visiting a Web site or conducting transactions over the Internet.
-How Web site designers, developers, managers, and sponsors should develop and maintain ethical medical and healthcare Web sites.
-How online medical and healthcare businesses should be ethically conducted.
-How online research should be ethically conducted.
- How all the professions involved in the medical or healthcare Internet should ethically comport themselves.Ensuring Internet Users Privacy and Security
In this age of expanding access to information, a critical ethical responsibility is recognizing the right to privacy. A considerable challenge arises from trying to balance the desire to make information freely available to users of the Internet, while at the same time protecting people's privacy and confidentiality [14]. Additionally, personal information is being transmitted to different medical and health organizations via the Internet and should be protected from intentionally or unintentionally reaching unsecured or unauthorized users. Understandably, protection of privacy is an issue of great concern among Internet users seeking health information [37].
There is an obvious need for secure Web sites, to ensure visitors' personal privacy and prevent personal medical information, including patterns of use and interests, from being sold, purchased, or inadvertently entering the hands of marketers, employers, and insurers [14]. Former US President Bill Clinton noted that "Nothing is more private than someone's medical or psychiatric records. And, therefore, if we are to make freedom fully meaningful in the Information Age, when most of our stuff is on some computer somewhere, we have to protect the privacy of individual health records." [89]...
Read the whole article:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1761893/
poster:psych chat
thread:923602
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