Case Study 2

An automated health information system has many advantages like increasing service quality and bringing efficiencies in the patient care system . As each patient 's health history is available to doctors , there are many benefits to reap , from reusing laboratory exams , to improving prescriptions based on past medicinal reactions . However , as with any centralized database of vital information , such systems are vulnerable to privacy and security threats

Wainer , Campos , Salinas , and Sigulem (2008 ) describe patient records to serve as legal documents (to record the actions of doctors ) and as collaboration and reminder

tools for health personnel (to follow up on treatment of patients . They maintain four general principles for any electronic health record system : Confidentiality , Control , Integrity and Legal Value . Paradoxically , while a patient is the owner of his medical information , he has no authorization to alter or change his records - his control is limited to assigning access levels to his medical records . The authors raise issues in the privacy domain by arguing that while each patient has the right to read his medical record , in some cases it might not be beneficial for a patient to know all the information , e .g . patient is given a placebo , or that the doctor is considering a serious illness as his diagnosis . Similar concerns are raised for situations where a patient may not be in the physical or mental state to grant read access to a doctor , so the doctor can access information without patient consent in emergencies

This poses design issues for...