Socio-technical aspects of the use of health related personal information for management and research

This paper focuses on the organisational, technical and ethical aspects related to the use of person identifiable health information for various health care management, administration, finance, research and educational purposes. It is based on the ethical standpoint that to the individuals in question, the identifiable health information represents the uttermost sensitive and critical information. In addition, nobody, possibly apart from the patients themselves, may claim ownership of such information. Thus identifiable health information should be (per individual) kept as collected and protected as possible, within the scope of the patient provider relationship. Identifiable health information should, whenever possible and reasonable, be restricted to the health care professionals providing the treatment and care to the patient, and only be made available to others, e.g. for management, research or educational purposes, either in anonymous or pseudonymous form. Secure information management (SIM) is presented as the socio-technical means to facilitate our ethical standpoint in a practical health care environment.