Advanced patient records: some ethical and legal considerations touching medical information space

The application of advanced computer-based information technology to patient records presents an opportunity for expanding the informational resource base that is available to health-care providers at all levels. Consequently, it has the potential for fundamentally restructuring the ethics of the physician/patient relationship and the ethos of contemporary health-care delivery. At the same time, the technology raises several important ethical problems. This paper explores some of these implications. It suggests that the fundamental ethical issue at stake in these developments is the status of the electronic record which functions as the analog of the health-care consumer in health-care decision making. Matters such as control and patient dignity are implicated. Other important ethical issues requiring solution include data ownership, data liability, informed consent to use and retrieval, security and access. The paper suggests that the ethical problems that arise cannot be solved in piecemeal fashion and on a purely national basis. They should be addressed in a coordinated international fashion and receive appropriate legal expression in the relevant countries and be incorporated into appropriate codes of ethics.