Medical Information Systems Ethics

1The Emergence of Medical Information in the Face of Personal and Societal Ethical Challenges

The considerable and ongoing progress made by medicine through applications of technologies and sciences suggests that we are moving toward a veritable “scientification” of the medical approach. These NTICs are becoming means of augmenting flows of information, exchanges, social interrelations and even access to programs, cases of cultural and social mediation notwithstanding. Services and tools are multiplying and being perfected but still are probably only in their early stages, causing real unease for both doctors and patients. Where will the human–machine fields of tomorrow fall, in relation to those of the doctor–machine? Certainly, within medical communication, a dialogue between a doctor, his or her patient, and the IS must now be taken into account.

In this chapter, we will establish why and how the sharing of medical information and its transparency has developed. This will also shed a more precise light on the distinction made between the terms “data”, “information” and “knowledge”. The inflation of medical knowledge and the brevity of its half-life make its control impossible for a single individual and demand a high-performance tool to access, acquire and manage it. This has resulted in the necessity of computerization for the sharing and exchange of data. This type of ethical debate applied to this information is an essential prerequisite for the comprehension, design and ...