Oral

Public health programs today constitute a multi-professional inter-organizational environment, where both health service and other organizations are involved. Developing information systems that satisfy the complex needs of these environments remains a significant challenge. To ensure that all involved organizations work together toward a common goal, such as health promotion, the most effective strategy is to share information freely within each of these programs. However, in practice it is seldom possible to realize this scenario due to the ethical issues that surround the system development process. This panel discussion focuses on the area of ethics within biomedical informatics and its effect on the utilization of technology to assist public health. The discussion will focus on topics such as the use of business intelligence through data exchange to help transform public health practice; the use of nanotechnology to assist in the development of protocols to assist in large-scale disasters; the privacy and security issues surrounding the exchange of confidential data amongst different entities; and how meta-data from applications such as text messaging components can be used for both clinical intervention and social marketing.

Session Objectives: 1. Identify the various bioethical issues in public helath informatics and how they can pose a barrier to effective data exchange 2. Demonstrate effective ways and means to appropriately deal with ethical issues in data sharing as they arise 3. Evaluate the privacy and security issue that are common within the data sharing environment.

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)