Question

What are the potential ethical and legal problems arising from social media use in health care?

Answer 1

Social media is a wide platform for everyone to communicate , share their ideas and build a new work experience. social media has lots of advantages in every fields including health care, but it also has some disadvantages.

Increased social media usage influence the attention of clinicians, researchers and other healthcare professionals. In social media we are sharing many informations which involve high levels of self disclosure by patients and their experiences in the healthcare,

Physicians also experience adverse outcomes through sharing sensitive and priivate information about the patients

Patients and healthcare practioners can become prey due to lack of understanding and knowledge of the complexities of using social media.

Ethical issues regarding social media and healthcare are complicated and multilayered as the healthcare organisations are making more use of social media. The ethical issues from the overuse of social media is discussed below:

• Communication between patient and a doctor through social media
• Data privacy and wearable technologies
• Social media and electronic health records

COMMUNICTAION BETWEEN PATIENT AND A DOCTOR THROUGH SOCIAL MEDIA

Communication between a doctor and a patient should be highly confidential and private. This ensures the trust to a patient regarding their problems and ensure the patient that their data whicha re shared with the doctor os safely stored in the patient record.

Ethically doctors must use care and good judgement when it comes to maintaining the proper level of professional relationship and confidentiality when navigating the online space. Face to face appointments are always better as compared to social media. Face to face interactions are always good and better.

DATA PRIVACY AND WEARABLE TECHNOLOGIES

Wearable technologies contain personal data generated from wearable poses many ethical and privacy of data concerns. The three different wearables currently available are sophisticated devices, fitness trackers and applications. These technologies often come together with smartphones or watches and also it require a third party application, which can then pose threats of a data breach. The more third parties involved, the more challenging it keep things secure

Leakage of information increases with attractive accessibilty of wireless technology

SOCIAL MEDIA AND ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORDS

The most important thing to be considered in the doctor patient relationship is the protection and confidentiality of the exchanged data. This is both an ethical and legal requirement as outlined by the health information portability and accountability act

If any one in the health care organisation is using socialmedia, they should be aware for how to protect or safeguard the exchanged data of the patients. They should assure safety as well as confidentiality for the data to be stored.

Ptients needs to be taught clearly on how to appropriately use socialmedia platforms when interacting with health professionals. When it comes to social media and healthcare, ethical considerations should be at the forefront of the development and improvement of the potent space for dialogue between patients and healthcare providers.