GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF INFORMATICS ETHICS
GROUP: MOTHERBOARD Advisor: Yheng Sanchez
Date: December 18, 2021
Index
Background of the project
Project Title
Main Concept
Diversion Labor
Conflict Encounter
Principles
Ethics deals with decisions about right versus wrong or good versus bad. These normative and moral questions involve people and how they affect each other. In the field of medicine, ethical issues have been well-known due to the nature of the profession in dealing with life-and-death situations. In the present information age of ubiquitous computing, medicine and technology have become overlapped. The field of health informatics focuses on using computers to enhance the way health information is processed. There is extensive literature on the subject of ethical conduct and principles in medicine. Similarly, there are existing bodies of knowledge on ethics in computing and information technology. It can be argued that these two bodies of literature cover ethical issues in health informatics. However, we point out that information technology and medicine together lead to new and more complicated issues in ethics. For example, the Therac-26 incident is one of the many examples of software bugs causing loss of lives. Because of a bug in the underlying operating system of the Therac-26 x-ray device, patients died or were seriously injured due to over-exposure. Who was to blame: developers, testers, or operators?
Author's Name
Informatics ethics have significant overlap with other codes of ethics developed around social settings. Many of these fundamental principles include autonomy, equality, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, and integrity. Other principles including information privacy, security, access, openness, least intrusive alternative, legitimate infringement, and accountability play essential roles in healthcare. All of these ethical principles, provide insight into the duties and responsibilities of clinicians, administrators, and other healthcare personnel when dealing with patient-related content. It is worth emphasizing that these principles function to provide guidance, depending on the nature, context, and specific details of individual situations.
Author's Name
Main Concept
We carried out a review of literature, codes of ethics, and technical standards from major policy drivers and stakeholders. Firstly, we used the Health Informatics World Wide (HIWW) online database to identify health informatics organizations. Next, we identified ethical codes within the organizations and common memberships to international and regional bodies using the respective organization's website. Based on common threads, we then analyzed the major ethical principles being discussed. We also accessed pertinent literature via online subscription databases. We selected all international, regional and national bodies that were currently actively listed in the HIWW online database. We measured their state of activeness by visiting their websites and looking at the published time stamps on their web pages. Our selection criteria for the codes of ethics ultimately available in our repository were two-fold; firstly, to maintain intellectual property rights, we indexed only codes and standards freely available on the internet. Secondly, major international, regional and national health informatics organizations were surveyed, and representative bodies from the various continents were selected.
Diversion Labour
Another controversy is over the presence of the computer in the exam room, and this too can become an ethics matter if it affects what occurs during the clinician-patient encounter. Some providers interact with EMR and CPOE systems while at the same time trying to engage the patient. A computer being used for documentation in the exam room can function as a physical or psychological barrier between provider and patient. Patients who feel physicians interact more with the computer than with them may feel alienated and consequently decline to share important concerns.
Diversion Labour
There are several concerns regarding informatics, their regulations, and ethics. One of the significant issues is the consideration of efficiency versus quality care. Specifically, when viewing decision-making across all layers of healthcare delivery, from initial in-person encounters to data storage and transfer, it is imperative to consider the reason behind each decision. An additional issue is patient access to care, and data which has several layers of regulation at the federal, state, and organizational level. Another concern revolves around end-of-life. With the population trending toward living longer, how will data and information be utilized, handled, protected or destroyed? Often individuals at end-of-life do not have the capacity to appreciate the complexity of how their data is treated within the broader healthcare environment are unable to make decisions on how that information should or should not be utilized.
Info
Conflict Encounter
Safeguards are increasingly likely to be challenged as genetic information makes its way
into the health care record. The risks of bias, discrimination, and social
stigma increase dramatically as genetic data become available to clinicians and investigators. Indeed, genetic information “goes beyond the ordinary varieties of medical
information in its predictive value” (Macklin, 1992). Genetic data also may be valuable
to people predicting outcomes, allocating resources, and the like (Table 10.1). In addition, genetic data are rarely associated with only a single person; they may provide information about relatives, including relatives who do not want to know about their genetic
makeup or maladies as well as relatives who would love dearly to know more about their
kin’s genome. There is still much work to be done in sorting out and addressing the
Ethics and Health Informatics 389
390 K. W. Goodman and R. A. Miller
ethical issues related to electronic storage, sharing, and retrieval of genetic data
(Goodman, 1996).
Bioinformatics offers excellent opportunities to increase our knowledge of genetics,
genetic diseases, and public health. These opportunities, however, are accompanied by
responsibilities to attend to the ethical issues raised by methods, applications, and
consequences.
Conclusion
Overall, informatics plays a significant role in modern healthcare. The budding field of informatics ethics highlights views that mandate both flexibility and development and recognition of standards for addressing these issues as the field continues to evolve. The collection, maintenance, usage, and destruction of data in electronic healthcare records will remain a focal point of interest in the ongoing societal debate and regulation.
Thanks for
your attention
Any questions?
Informatics Ethics
Judina Baronggan
Created on December 17, 2021
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Transcript
GENERAL PRINCIPLE OF INFORMATICS ETHICS
GROUP: MOTHERBOARD Advisor: Yheng Sanchez
Date: December 18, 2021
Index
Background of the project
Project Title
Main Concept
Diversion Labor
Conflict Encounter
Principles
Ethics deals with decisions about right versus wrong or good versus bad. These normative and moral questions involve people and how they affect each other. In the field of medicine, ethical issues have been well-known due to the nature of the profession in dealing with life-and-death situations. In the present information age of ubiquitous computing, medicine and technology have become overlapped. The field of health informatics focuses on using computers to enhance the way health information is processed. There is extensive literature on the subject of ethical conduct and principles in medicine. Similarly, there are existing bodies of knowledge on ethics in computing and information technology. It can be argued that these two bodies of literature cover ethical issues in health informatics. However, we point out that information technology and medicine together lead to new and more complicated issues in ethics. For example, the Therac-26 incident is one of the many examples of software bugs causing loss of lives. Because of a bug in the underlying operating system of the Therac-26 x-ray device, patients died or were seriously injured due to over-exposure. Who was to blame: developers, testers, or operators?
Author's Name
Informatics ethics have significant overlap with other codes of ethics developed around social settings. Many of these fundamental principles include autonomy, equality, justice, beneficence, non-maleficence, and integrity. Other principles including information privacy, security, access, openness, least intrusive alternative, legitimate infringement, and accountability play essential roles in healthcare. All of these ethical principles, provide insight into the duties and responsibilities of clinicians, administrators, and other healthcare personnel when dealing with patient-related content. It is worth emphasizing that these principles function to provide guidance, depending on the nature, context, and specific details of individual situations.
Author's Name
Main Concept
We carried out a review of literature, codes of ethics, and technical standards from major policy drivers and stakeholders. Firstly, we used the Health Informatics World Wide (HIWW) online database to identify health informatics organizations. Next, we identified ethical codes within the organizations and common memberships to international and regional bodies using the respective organization's website. Based on common threads, we then analyzed the major ethical principles being discussed. We also accessed pertinent literature via online subscription databases. We selected all international, regional and national bodies that were currently actively listed in the HIWW online database. We measured their state of activeness by visiting their websites and looking at the published time stamps on their web pages. Our selection criteria for the codes of ethics ultimately available in our repository were two-fold; firstly, to maintain intellectual property rights, we indexed only codes and standards freely available on the internet. Secondly, major international, regional and national health informatics organizations were surveyed, and representative bodies from the various continents were selected.
Diversion Labour
Another controversy is over the presence of the computer in the exam room, and this too can become an ethics matter if it affects what occurs during the clinician-patient encounter. Some providers interact with EMR and CPOE systems while at the same time trying to engage the patient. A computer being used for documentation in the exam room can function as a physical or psychological barrier between provider and patient. Patients who feel physicians interact more with the computer than with them may feel alienated and consequently decline to share important concerns.
Diversion Labour
There are several concerns regarding informatics, their regulations, and ethics. One of the significant issues is the consideration of efficiency versus quality care. Specifically, when viewing decision-making across all layers of healthcare delivery, from initial in-person encounters to data storage and transfer, it is imperative to consider the reason behind each decision. An additional issue is patient access to care, and data which has several layers of regulation at the federal, state, and organizational level. Another concern revolves around end-of-life. With the population trending toward living longer, how will data and information be utilized, handled, protected or destroyed? Often individuals at end-of-life do not have the capacity to appreciate the complexity of how their data is treated within the broader healthcare environment are unable to make decisions on how that information should or should not be utilized.
Info
Conflict Encounter
Safeguards are increasingly likely to be challenged as genetic information makes its way into the health care record. The risks of bias, discrimination, and social stigma increase dramatically as genetic data become available to clinicians and investigators. Indeed, genetic information “goes beyond the ordinary varieties of medical information in its predictive value” (Macklin, 1992). Genetic data also may be valuable to people predicting outcomes, allocating resources, and the like (Table 10.1). In addition, genetic data are rarely associated with only a single person; they may provide information about relatives, including relatives who do not want to know about their genetic makeup or maladies as well as relatives who would love dearly to know more about their kin’s genome. There is still much work to be done in sorting out and addressing the Ethics and Health Informatics 389 390 K. W. Goodman and R. A. Miller ethical issues related to electronic storage, sharing, and retrieval of genetic data (Goodman, 1996). Bioinformatics offers excellent opportunities to increase our knowledge of genetics, genetic diseases, and public health. These opportunities, however, are accompanied by responsibilities to attend to the ethical issues raised by methods, applications, and consequences.
Conclusion
Overall, informatics plays a significant role in modern healthcare. The budding field of informatics ethics highlights views that mandate both flexibility and development and recognition of standards for addressing these issues as the field continues to evolve. The collection, maintenance, usage, and destruction of data in electronic healthcare records will remain a focal point of interest in the ongoing societal debate and regulation.
Thanks for your attention
Any questions?