Question

What are legal and ethical implications of data mining with healthcare informatics?

Answer 1

Some of the ethical or legal issues may exists as the medical information or records are obtained by the informed consent in order to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the patient related information. At the same time patient should know why the medical record is required and its usage, who can assess these and how these will be maintained. Therefore, the linkage of the same need to reviewed or if any exemption need to be reviewed by the ethics review boards. HIPPA safeguards all the rights with respect the ethical and legal aspects towards the privacy of the individual’s health information. Other things need to considered, the how the data warehouse will be maintained and who will be accountable to provide privacy to the medical record and who will access the same. Use of data mining to extract medical data form the data warehouses and establishing the association among different data sets may put the patient’s information and privacy at risk. Transfer of medical information (i.e. Patient’s personal information) may also lead to theft risks.