Health care information management and the internet

Health Care Information and the Internet

Due to the Internet, the health care information that is being passed along to consumers is changing greatly. This can be good or bad, depending on who is being asked the question and how the healthcare information is managed. In the course of this paper, health care information and the Internet will be examined so that readers can get a more complete picture of what is going on in this field today.

It is important to discuss this issue because Internet sites that offer health information are growing so rapidly today and many consumers are not aware of which sites are relatively safe and which may be dangerous. There many governmental regulations that address the idea of fraud, but regulating quality often inhibits ideas and therefore this is not considered desirable. It is also very impractical because the Internet is so large in scope and so international in its character. The online market for consumer health care is already nearing $2 billion and the number of sites that provide this type of health-related information are growing so rapidly that it is difficult to keep up with. Most of the sides are trying very hard to increase the traffic that they have to their site and they advertise quality information.

Many of these web sites are well-known and even though they claim that they have high-quality information users on the Internet will often look at other sources for information of this nature. Naturally, the quality of information that is received about health care can affect the health of an individual. Sometimes products can be taken that are ineffective or harmful in some way and individuals can also delay the seeking of treatment because of what they have read online. One of the main reasons that the quality online is seen to be more significant then it is in print is that most people believe anything that is high-tech is credible. Information can be delivered so rapidly to individuals across the country and across the world and the cost of this information is relatively low. It is much less expensive than going to a doctor. The images that these web sites create for themselves are relatively easy and also inexpensive and the fact that web sites are so international makes enforcing and regulating them complex and difficult.

How quality is assessed often comes from peer review. When this is done experts in the field look at the material that is provided to ensure that the work is quality. Some of the Internet sites that deal with medical information utilize this process in order to review the materials that are offered before they are posted. This presents them with some difficulty, however, because the approach of having peer reviewed information is not always uniform and because experts in the field are required. When Internet consumers visit sites that do not have these types of reviews the quality of information that they receive may be unacceptable.

The real issue for health-care today over the Internet is whether developers, advertisers, and consumers can assess health information in regards to quality without being an expert on the content and whether these web sites that offer health information can remain ethical. It is possible that they can do this although it will never take the place of being reviewed by peers. There are various indicators of quality that Internet users can identify and there many organizations that provide various tips on how sites should be assessed.

This is still a somewhat haphazard approach, however, and since it has not been developed by any strong consensus of opinion it has also not been validated. This is very significant because individuals that are looking for health-care information want to ensure that what they find on the Internet is safe. Cyberspace does not contain any type of written rules but the health care sites out there that are considered to be major sites feel it is important that they can assure the public that the content they provide is accurate and reliable. In doing this they work to gain the confidence of the public and be down-to-earth with how they deal with both sickness and health.

Many of these web sites want to commit the rules that they have created onto paper in order to remedy the situation of trust. Many ethical guidelines are currently being developed that will help govern the program content, sponsorship, privacy, advertising practices, and other issues that face online health care. Two of the most serious issues that are effectively managing health care information that goes to consumers are the protection of privacy and the allowing of pharmaceutical sales on the Web. The way that individuals manage the health conditions that they have and the way that they receive health care information has been strongly revolutionized by the Internet.

In the year 2000 it was expected that over 41 million Americans would utilize the Internet for their health care. 43% of the individuals that utilize the Internet look at health care information every year. Health concerns also should be considered one of the most common reasons that individuals utilize the Internet and the number of individuals that use the Internet for this purpose appears to be growing by upwards of 50% per year. It is important to understand that health care was growing very rapidly even before the Internet health care boom began. In the 20th-century health care services grew incredibly and many patients now look for various counsel from different individual doctors about services that they may need instead of consulting one specific family physician for everything related to their health.

The Internet got in on this very easily because it provides fast, easy, and potentially much more health care information. However, the idea of defrauding consumers is also something that should be considered when looking at health care because the health information and health care services that are being sought by these consumers are somewhat different than what they would find if they went to their family doctor. The services and information that they receive are not given in the same manner as would traditionally have occurred if they would have gone to licensed medical practitioners. In general, health care has been behind various other sectors in utilizing services and solutions dealing with information technology. However, modern health care is becoming so important and advances are being made so rapidly that information must be shared in order to help facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of many patients.

The Internet is also being utilized for research, public health monitoring, evaluating and paying insurance claims, and educating and training various individuals regarding health care topics and issues. In order to respond to the strong consumer use on the Internet that is taking place regarding health care, various organizations and services that deal with health care must change over to some extent from the traditional establishments that they have had to Web site services. Many HMOs and various health-care professionals utilize the Internet today to access accounts, communicate between providers and patients, transmit and store data relating to patients, hold discussions and offer advice among various health-care professionals, research specific drugs and diseases, and order various products.

It is quite likely that the health services that are offered on the Internet will overtake standard medicine at some point but control over health information on a personal level and also adequate amounts of confidentiality must be insured by various laws before this can take place. Also important to ensure for the safety of consumers is the reliability of the information that these individuals receive online and ways to a fight back against trade practices that are considered fraudulent or deceptive.

The invasion of an individual's privacy is also a significant issue and many health-care companies are looking closely at cyber ethics because this is significant to health care today. It is important to discuss cyber ethics to some extent here because it strongly affects the way that health-care information to the consumer is managed on the Internet. Even though cyber ethics involves more than just health related information, managing health care information on the Internet today is strongly effected by the ethics of the individuals that post health information to web sites and state that the content is safe and reliable. If they do this in an unethical manner, they could be harming many people. While this harm may be strictly unintentional, it is still there and so consumers must be very careful when it comes to the information that they find on the Internet, hat kind of web site it comes from, and how reliable the site seems to be.

The information revolution that has taken place within various industrialized nations in the world has already begun to alter many aspects of the lives of individuals. This can be seen in work and employment, national defense, medical care, banking and commerce, transportation, and entertainment. The computer and cyber ethics has affected all of these things. Information technology and computers have also begun to affect, in ways that are both bad and good, family life, community life, education, freedom, human relationships, democracy, and many other issues. By looking into the broadest sense of the word it can be seen that cyber ethics should actually be understood as a branch of applied ethics, and ethics should be something that is believed in by all that provide medical information, whether via the Internet or in some other way, since providing false or fraudulent information could be damaging and potentially deadly for many people.

This particular branch of ethics analyzes and studies information technology and what type of ethical and social impacts it has. Within recent years this new field has led to countless courses, workshops, articles, journals, and many other ways of expression. With the World Wide Web becoming so popular when it comes to health care information, cyber ethics is also being transformed into what many term 'global information ethics'. Health care information that is presented on the Web is truly global in nature, as anyone that has access to the Internet can get this information and utilize it to make what they feel to be an informed decision about their health care options.

Computers in the health care workplace are one of the things that have definitely attracted research because computers are able to do so much throughout the workplace. They are almost able to replace individuals for some tasks but for others they are a far cry from the efficient humans that are necessary. There are many economic incentives available to work toward replacing human beings with computerized devices. This has been done in some areas for certain things but there are specific issues that human beings have to address and therefore not all human jobs will be eliminated by computers.

Computer crime is very important when dealing with cyber ethics because hackers and viruses seem to be very serious issues for computer users today and hacking into patient information has become a very strong concern where privacy rights are involved. Computer security is becoming a great topic of concern when computer ethics is discussed and much of this does not have anything to do with the physical security of the actual hardware but rather what is termed 'logical security,' which includes privacy, unimpaired service, integrity, consistency, and the control of access to various resources. Privacy is likely the most important issue when it comes to patient records and information, but integrity is by far the most important issue when it comes to the accessing of health care on the Internet.

Probably the most important issue for cyber ethics in this day and age when it comes to health care is privacy. This is not only true of the privacy that is necessary for patient records and sensitive medical information, but also of the information that consumers search for on Web sites and some of the information that they may provide to individuals online that deal with symptoms and other issues that are related to health care. Privacy was one of the earliest topics that actually created public interest, and it still remains the most significant one for many individuals. Even as early as the 1960s the government had huge databases that contained a great deal of information about various private citizens, and medical information is becoming that way now. The government is not storing this information, but many hospitals and HMOs are.

In the 1970s there were computer privacy laws that were passed within the United States and public concern has remained high about computer threatened privacy issues ever since then. Computers can be networked together so easily and so much can be stored on them and retrieved at a glance that sensitive information kept on computers can be relatively dangerous even if it is out of the public domain and out of reach of individuals who are seen as threats. Most people who are serious enough about breaking into a computer are able to do so if they have the technological know-how or if they can find someone who is technologically capable of breaking in, and when they do they can access all types of patient information and sensitive data. When this sort of thing happens individuals not only feel as though their rights have been violated but they are uncertain what types of information have been collected by the breach of privacy. This does not imply that these individuals have anything at all to hide, but only that they value their privacy very strongly.