Enabling technology to advance health-protecting individual rights-are we walking the talk?

Abstract

The evolving structure and business of health care services and delivery need the functionality and capability offered by electronic health record (EHR) systems. By electronically diffusing the traditional patient record, however, this new model blurs the long-established medical data home, raising concerns about data ownership, confidentiality, access and individual rights. In 2008 the Lawson Health Research Institute began the process of instituting a robust health informatics and collaborative research infrastructure, now known as I-THINK Research. As data are migrated to the platform and policies are developed, we are forced to confront the complexity of issues around protection of individual rights. The paper presents, in a broader context, the main issues surrounding the privacy debate and the need for education, accountability and new legislation to help define and protect individual rights as new e-health business models emerge. © 2010 Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.