Health Informatics Ethics

Ethical issues related to health information and communications technologies confront health personnel. Health informaticians, as members of the healthcare team, should gain an understanding of ethics so that they may meaningfully contribute to the team. This presentation will briefly describe sentinel ethical lapses in biomedical research and the resulting guidelines and regulations. It also will highlight ethics as a component of professional education, describe how ethical approaches vary among professional disciplines, sketch the implications of varying approaches, and examine ethical conflicts in the practice of health informatics.