Abstract
Electronic patient records (EPRs) are electronic versions of traditional paper-based patient records (PBRs). They contain a patient’s medical history inclusive of diagnoses, medications, immunizations, family medical history, etc. as well as contact information. They may also contain radiological images and other diagnostic data not generally found in PBRs. Informatically, they function as patient analogues in decision space. Being electronic in nature, they can be transferred to data storage devices and be electronically transmitted, received, retrieved, searched, linked, or otherwise manipulated for various health-care-related purposes. They are increasingly replacing PBRs because they facilitate efficient and cost-effective health-care delivery and planning and make possible eHealth and telemedicine – the practice of providing medical care to geographically distanced patients through electronic communication and information technologies. However, they also raise ethical concerns that center in privacy and confidentiality, and the technical problems they encounter – integrity, security, and interoperability as well as updating legacy systems – present ethical problems in their own right. Issues such as ownership and secondary use for research also assume new dimensions, and the outsourcing of EPR-related services introduces legal complications that can undermine the standard ethics of patient records.
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Further Readings
Kluge, E.-H. W. (2001). The ethics of electronic patient records. New York: Peter Lang.
Kushniruk, A. W., & Borycki, E. M. (2008). Human, social, and organizational aspects of health information systems. Hershey: IGI Global.
Layman, E. J. (2008). Ethical issues and the electronic health record. Health Care Management (Frederick), 27(2), 165–176. doi:10.1097/01.HCM.0000285044.19666.a8.
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Kluge, EH.W. (2015). Electronic Patient Records. In: ten Have, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_168-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05544-2_168-1
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