Alternatives for protecting privacy while respecting patient care and public health needs

This paper begins with a discussion of the value of privacy, especially for medical records in an age of advancing technology. I then examine three alternative approaches to protection of medical records: reliance on governmental guidelines, the use of corporate self-regulation, and my own third hybrid view on how to maintain a presumption in favor of privacy with respect to medical information, safeguarding privacy as vigorously and comprehensively as possible, without sacrificing the benefits of new information technology in medicine. None of the three models I examine are unproblematic, yet it is crucial to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of these alternative approaches.