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Alternatives for protecting privacy while respecting patient care and public health needs

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Abstract

This paper begins with a discussion of the value of privacy,especially for medical records in an age of advancing technology.I then examine three alternative approaches to protection ofmedical records: reliance on governmental guidelines, the useof corporate self-regulation, and my own third hybrid view onhow to maintain a presumption in favor of privacy with respectto medical information, safeguarding privacy as vigorously andcomprehensively as possible, without sacrificing the benefitsof new information technology in medicine. None of the threemodels I examine are unproblematic, yet it is crucial to weighthe strengths and weaknesses of these alternative approaches.

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DeCew, J.W. Alternatives for protecting privacy while respecting patient care and public health needs. Ethics and Information Technology 1, 249–255 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010012018213

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010012018213

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