The Electronic Health Record: Ethical Considerations

The Electronic Health Record: Ethical Considerations analyses the ethical issues that surround the construction, maintenance, storage, use, linkage, manipulation and communication of electronic health records. Its purpose is to provide ethical guidance to formulate and implement policies at the local, national and global level, and to provide the basis for global certification in health information ethics.

Electronic health records (EHRs) are increasingly replacing the use of paper-based records in the delivery of health care. They are integral to providing eHealth, telehealth, mHealth and pHealth - all of which are increasingly replacing direct and personal physician-patient interaction - as well as in the developing field of artificial intelligence and expert systems in health care. The book supplements considerations that are raised by national and international regulations dealing with electronic records in general, for instance the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union.

This book is a valuable resource for physicians, health care administrators and workers, IT service providers and several members of biomedical field who are interested in learning more about how to ethically manage health data.

Provides examples to explain the various points made in each chapter to increase the readability of the book and provide, in more familiar terms, illustrations of the reasoning that is advancedEncompasses several diagrams to illustrate the logical structure of the ethical relationships that are discussed in the various chapters and to show how they are related to the decision making processPresents a glossary to provide short definitions for some of the more technical terms used in the book

1. The Nature of Electronic Health Records
2. From Ethical Principles to Information Ethics
3. Ownership, Privacy, and Related Issues
4. Physicians, Health Information Professionals, and Health Care Institutions
5. Framework Considerations
6. Ethics, the Reality of Use, and Global Considerations