Informatics 9: Health Informatics Ethics Flashcards
nuremberg code
- holocaust
- medical crimes against humanity
- voluntary consent
- right to withdraw from experiment
- qualified medical experimenter
world medical associations (WMA) declaration of helsinki
-right to privacy and confidentiality of personal information of research subjects
informatics ethics: international medical informatics associations (IMIA) code of ethics
- international medical informatics associations (IMIA) code of ethics:
- provide ethical guidance for the professionals themselves
- to furnish a set of principles against which the conduct of the professionals may be measured (use committee)
- to provide the public with a clear statement of the ethical considerations that should shape the behavior of the professionals themselves
international considerations: ethics, laws, and culture
- influenced by countrys laws and culture
- relationship between ethics, law, culture and society is unclear, is not fixed internationally, and may be fluid even within a given country over time
different views of ethics
- ethic does not exist outside the law, and exists only for the good of a properly ordered and legal society
- ethics is usually strongly informed by the law, society, and the prevailing culture, and are extensions of these
- ethics exists entirely outside of the law, and is a matter of personal conscience
pertinent ethical principles
- right to privacy
- guard against excessive personal data collection
- security of data
- integrity of data- current and accurate
- informed consent
- applicable laws
- medical ethics
- sharing data only when appropriate
difficulties applying medical ethics in the digital world
- how to obtain informed consent for the use of patient data in large databases
- broad informed consent
- abuse? corporate ownership?
- research on electronic postings: privacy and disclosure
- human subject model- all medical rules apply
- textual object model- only rules of plagiarism and copyright apply
researchers must obey the law
- law do not establish ethics
- law > ethics
submit a protocol to ethics committee or an institutional review board (IRB)
-IRBs not fully aware of ethical issues and technical applications
keep data secure
- database manager takes full responsibility, not researcher
- overall responsibility for the material cannot be transferred to anyone else
guidelines to electronic communication with patients and caregivers
- medico-legal adivce
- make patients aware of who is reading the email
- types of email topics that are acceptable
- use of language
- tips for patients to ensure they can quickly reference relevant emails
- do not use email communication with new patients
measures to ensure documents are understood
- flesch reading ease test- assigns a value of 1 (most difficult) to 100 (easy)
- flesch-kincaid test- assigns a number corresponds to school grade (grade 1-14) -> on a scale from 1-5
- higher grade lower score
- tests are weighted differently
- mircosoft office word- readability score
simple data protection
- encryption programs
- passwords protection on hardware and software
- anti-virus program
- anti-spyware and malware software
- clean computers before discarding
- be aware of social media
- removal of identifying material from electronic files and databases
collection of visitor data to websites
- tracking cookies
- usually without consent or even notification
- could be distributed to third party vendors
- violates law and ethics principles- obtains visitors consent
health informatics ethics and students
- students should be extremely careful about online comments and photographs of themselves, colleagues and patients on social networks
- use of mobile devices with cameras
- research projects, big or small, follow IRB
- plagiarism
- paper mills
- manipulation of electronic files
- recording of lectures without consent
- using pirated digital files
- accessing documents illegally
