Student Attitudes to Healthcare Information Technology and Patient Privacy
Faculty Sponsor
Dr. Anna Foucek Tresidder Email: atresidder1@ewu.edu
Dr. Patricia Richards Email: prichar4@ewu.edu
Session Type
Poster Presentation
Research Project Abstract
Abstract The purpose of this study is to identify the attitudes of students studying in healthcare or healthcare related fields that will become employed in healthcare or healthcare related industries to the development and utilization of healthcare information technologies (HIT), specially the means by which it could violate patient privacy on various levels. The reasoning behind this study is that as data platforms embrace further techniques to gather diverse data on an individual’s habits so too will this be embraced by HIT to better improve health outcomes of patients, but with the possible drawback of reducing the privacy of a patient both in and outside of a clinical setting. This trend can already be observed with new developments in patient health trackers, internal bio-metric technologies and mobile phone based health application for gathering patient data on a near continual basis. The study gathers student attitudes on HIT by means of a voluntary questionnaire. A key benefit from this research is exploring the ethical attitudes of healthcare workers that may arise from the further incorporation of HIT into the medical field. This can then lead to developments in necessary training for healthcare employees in ethical HIT use, safeguards for those technologies to prevent abuse, as well as the possible creation of new patient protection laws within the realm of HIT usage.
Session Number
PS1
Location
HUB Multipurpose Room
Abstract Number
PS1-a
Student Attitudes to Healthcare Information Technology and Patient Privacy
HUB Multipurpose Room
Abstract The purpose of this study is to identify the attitudes of students studying in healthcare or healthcare related fields that will become employed in healthcare or healthcare related industries to the development and utilization of healthcare information technologies (HIT), specially the means by which it could violate patient privacy on various levels. The reasoning behind this study is that as data platforms embrace further techniques to gather diverse data on an individual’s habits so too will this be embraced by HIT to better improve health outcomes of patients, but with the possible drawback of reducing the privacy of a patient both in and outside of a clinical setting. This trend can already be observed with new developments in patient health trackers, internal bio-metric technologies and mobile phone based health application for gathering patient data on a near continual basis. The study gathers student attitudes on HIT by means of a voluntary questionnaire. A key benefit from this research is exploring the ethical attitudes of healthcare workers that may arise from the further incorporation of HIT into the medical field. This can then lead to developments in necessary training for healthcare employees in ethical HIT use, safeguards for those technologies to prevent abuse, as well as the possible creation of new patient protection laws within the realm of HIT usage.
