Question

• Discuss the challenges of privacy and confidentiality within the history and evolution of public health informatics.

1. What opportunities will the migration to an EHR and the implementation of a RHIO provide to address these challenges?

Answer 1

Public health informatics has been defined as the systematic application of information and computer science and technology to public health practices, research and learning. It emphasizes on disease and injury prevention by altering the conditions or the environment that place populations at risk is the core principle of public health informatics. Moreover, privacy and confidentiality and protection of human subjects from potential misuse is some of the major concerns in public informatics.

EHR ( ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD) is a digital version of the traditional paper-based medical record of an individual information.

RHIO (REGIONAL HEALTH INFORMATION ORGANIZATION) is a group of organizations within a specific area that share healthcare related information electronically which means the information exchange and develops health information technology (HIT) standards.

In the past, instant sharing of information between and among healthcare providers promises significant benefits to bath of them, including greater coordination and efficiency in healthcare delivery system. It also reduces medical errors and misdiagnoses which improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the health care system more deeply. However, such informational practices threatened the patient privacy and leads to security breaches, misuse of information and most importantly loss of patient control over confidential and sensitive health information. Also, it threatens the communication between the doctors and patients and also lose faith in their treating doctors.

To reduce these effects on healthcare system, they develop vigorous informed consent and specific limitations on information sharing to protect sensitive data and to ensure individual control over his or her personal medical records. They also offers following recommendations to increase their own privacy and confidentiality by developing these steps. They are,

a) Give patients and providers control over access to, and sharing of, medical records.

b) Offer patients the rights to opt-out altogether policy to participate in health information exchange

c) A notice to patients when their providers links to an HIE

d) Prohibit and sanction, the misuse of medical information obtained through an HIE

e) Prohibition of health information exchange fro selling data without a patient's personal identifiers.