Health geomatics: an enabling suite of technologies in health and healthcare
Computers and Biomedical Research
Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems
Security Engineering: A Guide to Building Dependable Distributed Systems
Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions
Making Use: Scenario-Based Design of Human-Computer Interactions
Ethical Aspects of Information Technology
Ethical Aspects of Information Technology
Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment
Information Ecology: Mastering the Information and Knowledge Environment
Requirements Engineering: Processes and Techniques
Requirements Engineering: Processes and Techniques
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Public health programs today constitute a multi-professional inter-organizational environment, where both health service and other organizations are involved. Developing information systems, including the IT security measures needed to suit this complex context, is a challenge. To ensure that all involved organizations work together towards a common goal, i.e., promotion of health, an intuitive strategy would be to share information freely in these programs. However, in practice it is seldom possible to realize this ideal scenario. One reason may be that ethical issues are often ignored in the system development process. This investigation uses case study methods to explore ethical obstacles originating in the shared use of geographic health information in public health programs and how this affects the design of information systems. Concerns involving confidentiality caused by geographically referenced health information and influences of professional and organizational codes are discussed. The experience presented shows that disregard of ethical issues can result in a prolonged development process for public health information systems. Finally, a theoretical model of design issues based on the case study results is presented.