Data Sharing and Protection of Private Patient Information

The Ethical and Legal Dilemmas Resulting from Data Sharing and Protection of Private Patient Information
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Abstract
In this 21s century ear, healthcare organizations are grappling with how best to enhance care delivery and ensure patient data safety. Therefore, the debate about data sharing and protection when utilizing data analytics in the healthcare sector is vital. The paper shares some of the benefits of data analytics in a health care setting as well as notable ethical and legal concerns that arise while private patient information. Patients’ data privacy and protection are steadily losing bearing. However, health care stakeholders are busy focusing on ideal approaches to mediating the problems. For example, there is a need to emphasize the use of set data guidelines such as the United Nations (UN), Global Protection Privacy, Data Protection Principles and the European Union’s (EU), and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to achieve patients’ data safety. Besides, healthcare institutions are encouraged to ensure systems are safeguarded in their entirety while utilizing intrusion software, use of firewalls, as well as furthering patient-physician collaboration when analyzing quantitative and qualitative data. The paper recommends that data security be achieved by ensuring private companies developing healthcare innovations do it having the end-user and the community concerns in mind.
Keywords: Data collection, consent, data dissemination, data sharing, and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
The Ethical and Legal Dilemmas Resulting from Data Sharing and Protection of Private Patient Information
The ubiquitous deployment of digital technology is a game-changer of how operations and services are carried out in the healthcare setting. While these technologies are a breakthrough of healthcare professionals having an easy time identifying the proper medical intervention to specific patients, raising ethical and legal concerns about data sharing and the protection of private information is debatable. The ethical and legal issues raised span beyond privacy and confidentiality and go as far as matters related to decision making. This paper argues that data analytics is critical because it improves healthcare quality and access to healthcare. However, to achieve efficiency, there is a need to pursue incremental reforms that balance the interests of healthcare professionals and patients.
Potential Benefits and Reasons to Share Data
Predictive analytics in the healthcare setting is becoming more relevant because of the numerous benefits it poses. Data analytics has led to the emergence of real-time electronic data sets. Mitchel & Kan (2018) opine that the advent of electronic health records (EHR) has made it easier to share information in the health care field. Using electronic health records to share data is beneficial as it makes patient data centralized, streamlining retrieving and updating the stored information. Conversely, centralized data translates to minimize errors. Sharing data in a healthcare setting is also pivotal as it enhances accountability, especially when patients are recei...