Ethics, Medicine, and Information Technology: Intelligent Machines and the Transformation of Health Care / Edition 2

by Kenneth W. Goodman

Overview

Information technology is transforming the practices of medicine, nursing, and biomedical research. Computers can now render diagnoses and prognoses more accurately than humans. The concepts of privacy and confidentiality are evolving as data moves from paper to silicon to clouds. Big data promises financial wealth, as well as riches of information and benefits to science and public health. Online access and mobile apps provide patients with an unprecedented connection to their health and health records. This transformation is as unsettling as it is exhilarating. This unique new book is essential for anyone who uses computers in health care, biomedical research or public health, and cares about the ethical issues that arise in their work. With chapters spanning issues from professionalism and quality to mobile health and bioinformatics, it establishes what will become the “core curriculum” in ethics and health informatics, a growing field which encourages truly inter- and multidisciplinary inquiry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107624733
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	01/14/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	899,414
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Kenneth W. Goodman is founder and director of the Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, and co-director of the university's ethics programs.

Table of Contents

1. Information technologies and twenty-first-century clinical practice: ethics and the electronic health record; 2. Ancient professions and intelligent machines: the ethical challenge of computational decision support; 3. Health privacy, data protection, and trust; 4. Professionalism, programming, and pedagogy; 5. Safety, standards, and interoperability; 6. The e-Health industry: markets, vendors and regulators; 7. Digital health: ubiquitous, virtual, remote, robotic; 8. Biomedical research from genomes to populations: big data and the growth of knowledge; Appendix A. AMIA's Code of Professional and Ethical Conduct; Appendix B. The IMIA Code of Ethics for Health Information Professionals; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'All in all, this is an excellent compact volume that can serve a number of purposes. It is certainly a primer on the main ethical issues that affect biomedical informatics and will be useful not only to informatics professionals but also to practitioners, researchers, and others interested in the topic.' William Hersh, Journal of Biomedical Informatics

From the Publisher

Reviewer: Abram L Brummett, PhD Student(Saint Louis University)
Description: Advances in health informatics are rapidly paving the way into uncharted ethical territory. The now required electronic health record database has given rise to a host of ethical issues around privacy, trust, computational decision support, and big data for the growth of knowledge in medicine. This book by Kenneth Goodman is a foray into these immediate concerns with insights into the ethical quandaries of the not too distant future.
Purpose: The purpose is to address the relative lack of literature on health informatics when compared to what has been produced in genetics, neuroethics, nanoethics, and other exciting new fields at the intersection of technology and medicine. Goodman seeks to establish a "core curriculum" of issues from the past two decades that have arisen for ethics and health informatics, with chapters spanning topics from whether and how far intelligent machines should be allowed to support medical decisions (chapter 2) to the regulation of the now big business of electronic health records (chapter 6).
Audience: The target audience is explicitly described as "clinicians, researchers, and students who work in health information technology and have an interest in ethics." With a rather specific audience that will include a diverse range of specialties, Goodman successfully navigates ethical discussion in such a way that will appeal to clinicians and scientists while keeping the bioethics experts engaged. Readers are required to have a basic knowledge of the medical, ethical, and information technology fields.
Features: The book is organized so that later chapters build on the early chapters that introduce ethical concepts. Goodman's analysis includes some speculation, but focuses primarily on the more immediate ethical dilemmas of today. Anticipating a continued melding of information technology and healthcare, he speculates about a future where medicine could be reduced to answering a series of questions from a machine and being prescribed a treatment. More immediate issues dominate his discussion, such as whether the widespread use of electronic health records is eroding traditional medical skills and relationships while breeding new forms of unprofessional conduct from "harried and hurried clinicians." He also considers that now that there is potential for big data to use vast quantities of information to advance medical knowledge, there is a balancing act between medical privacy and the benefits of using the health records of others. He calls for an overall analysis of these issues that is balanced between the "boosters and the Luddites," what he terms a "progressive caution." Many of the chapters illustrate points through simple and frequent bulleted lists, where perhaps other methods such as illustrations, diagrams, or tables could be used to help bring the information to life.
Assessment: At fewer than 200 pages, this relatively slim book offers a digestible introduction to a field treated elsewhere by heavier anthologies. The inclusion of the AMIA's Code of Professional and Ethical Conduct as well as the IMIA Code of Ethics for Health Information Professionals are a nice addition that makes this work stand out from similar books. Endnotes are included after each chapter, but references appear at the end of the book, which makes finding references by topic a bit more challenging. Overall, this is a stimulating, well-written introduction to core substantive issues in an emerging field.

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