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Privacy, confidentiality, and the use of Canadian health information for research and statistics

Article Abstract:

Concern for privacy and confidentiality is a strategic barrier to the use of personal information for expanded Canadian health research and statistics, more effective services, and better use of resources. This article identifies such privacy concerns, seeks to explain them, and identifies various responses. Specific misgivings of privacy advocates must be addressed, if data protection problems are not to impede an improved national health information system. It is essential legislation, policies, and practices affecting a national health information system enshrine the existence of a clear, functional separation between research and/or statistical and administrative uses of personal data. Ensuring true informed consent for secondary uses of personal information is a potential blockage to a strengthened health information system in Canada, since so much of the relevant data originates in unrelated transactional situations. The National Council on Health Information should actively promote the enactment of general data protection legislation for the public sector in the eight provinces without such laws in effect, since the existence of sound data protection, including an ombudsperson to promote implementation, will facilitate the development of an advanced health information system under controlled conditions. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Medicine, Laws, regulations and rules, Information management, Medical informatics, Information storage and retrieval systems

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Accessing Canadian ethics research

Article Abstract:

A three-person research team investigated the teaching of ethics in all Canadian universities and colleges and the state of ethics research by Canadian ethics researchers. Research results revealed that education concerning professional ethics was much less developed than bioethics. A 1987 survey revealed that only 55% of Canadian business schools had a course in ethics. In 80% of the schools surveyed, a course in ethics was not a requirement, but an elective. One of the major areas of ethics research is the creation of curriculum materials. A report by the three-person research team made three recommendations: academic ethics research should serve the needs of professionals as well as the public; business and professional ethics should be interdisciplinary; and researchers, educators, and consultants need to develop national and international networks.

Research, Canada, Universities and colleges, Study and teaching, Education, Higher, Higher education, Ethics, Business ethics

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