suicide of a British Indian nurse after divulging information about the health of Duchess of Cambridge after falling for a radio prank shows us how highly the western world demand privacy regarding their health data.
But in Sri Lanka we hardly worry about the patient privacy. Care recipients divulge some of the most intimate details of their lives to health care providers in order to receive optimal care. They will provide these information to the PHM or MOH with the idea that it will only remain between the care recipient and the care provider. But then it’s an issue when all that information is uploaded to a digital system that’s accessible to any care giver around the island.
This is what is meant by confidentiality. The health care recipient
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If the health care recipient’s family member or a relative is in the field of health, they have to ability to check information about the recipient on the system. This could lead to many domestic disputes. Marriages can be broken if some sensitive information is revealed this way. Children could loose their respect to a parent after knowing some personal details of their parents. Some of these issues can even lead to suicide with the shame of other people knowing their intimate details. Another instance is maybe a health care worker will use the system to look up the medical details of a potential future partner such as their sexual history or medical conditions etc. which is clearly a breach of their …show more content…
This will ensure the optimal level of data collection rather than blindly invade the privacy of the health care recipient unnecessarily.
One of the best ways to safeguard privacy of personal health data is do away with name based information system or personal identifiable systems such as using National Identity number for registration. Because using something like NIC still divulges some personal information about the care recipient such as year of birth, gender, demographic data. It also gives rise to a problem that it’ll only be available for someone who possesses a NIC which leaves out noncitizens, minors, and many specially from war torn areas who do not possess a NIC.
To overcome this, a personal health number has been introduced. It is issued at the first contact with the system and will have a unique number linking health care records of the health care recipient. Since the same system is used thorough out the country there aren’t any problems with interoperability. And real time true data can be obtained from anywhere in the country. Also we can track the actual burden of the disease and not episodes by using such a system. Since there are minimal personal identifiable information health care recipient would also feel comfortable about his privacy remaining intact and also he has the option of