IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v17y2020i9p3006-d350602.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health Information Systems in the Digital Health Ecosystem—Problems and Solutions for Ethics, Trust and Privacy

Author

Listed:
  • Pekka Ruotsalainen

    (Faculty for Information Technology and Communication Sciences, Tampere University, 33100 Tampere, Finland)

  • Bernd Blobel

    (Medical Faculty, University of Regensburg, 93053 Regensburg, Germany
    Fist Medical Faculty, Charles University Prague, 12800 Prague, Czech Republic
    eHealth Competence Center Bavaria, Deggendorf Institute of Technology, 94469 Deggendorf, Germany
    Current address: Franz-Josef-Strauss Allee 11, 93053 Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany.)

Abstract

Digital health information systems (DHIS) are increasingly members of ecosystems, collecting, using and sharing a huge amount of personal health information (PHI), frequently without control and authorization through the data subject. From the data subject’s perspective, there is frequently no guarantee and therefore no trust that PHI is processed ethically in Digital Health Ecosystems. This results in new ethical, privacy and trust challenges to be solved. The authors’ objective is to find a combination of ethical principles, privacy and trust models, together enabling design, implementation of DHIS acting ethically, being trustworthy, and supporting the user’s privacy needs. Research published in journals, conference proceedings, and standards documents is analyzed from the viewpoint of ethics, privacy and trust. In that context, systems theory and systems engineering approaches together with heuristic analysis are deployed. The ethical model proposed is a combination of consequentialism, professional medical ethics and utilitarianism. Privacy enforcement can be facilitated by defining it as health information specific contextual intellectual property right, where a service user can express their own privacy needs using computer-understandable policies. Thereby, privacy as a dynamic, indeterminate concept, and computational trust, deploys linguistic values and fuzzy mathematics. The proposed solution, combining ethical principles, privacy as intellectual property and computational trust models, shows a new way to achieve ethically acceptable, trustworthy and privacy-enabling DHIS and Digital Health Ecosystems.

Suggested Citation

  • Pekka Ruotsalainen & Bernd Blobel, 2020. "Health Information Systems in the Digital Health Ecosystem—Problems and Solutions for Ethics, Trust and Privacy," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(9), pages 1-15, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:9:p:3006-:d:350602
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/9/3006/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/9/3006/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hasnas, John, 1998. "The Normative Theories of Business Ethics: A Guide for the Perplexed," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(1), pages 19-42, January.
    2. D. Harrison McKnight & Vivek Choudhury & Charles Kacmar, 2002. "Developing and Validating Trust Measures for e-Commerce: An Integrative Typology," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 13(3), pages 334-359, September.
    3. Dimitrios Dechouniotis & Ioannis Dimolitsas & Konstantinos Papadakis-Vlachopapadopoulos & Symeon Papavassiliou, 2018. "Fuzzy Multi-Criteria Based Trust Management in Heterogeneous Federated Future Internet Testbeds," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karen Schnell & Kaushik Roy & Madhuri Siddula, 2023. "A Descriptive Study of Webpage Designs for Posting Privacy Policies for Different-Sized US Hospitals to Create an Assessment Framework," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-13, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Joseph A. Cazier & Benjamin B. M. Shao & Robert D. St. Louis, 2007. "Sharing information and building trust through value congruence," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 9(5), pages 515-529, November.
    2. Cheng, Junjun & Chen, Bo & Huang, Zihang, 2023. "Collective-based ad transparency in targeted hotel advertising: Consumers’ regulatory focus underlying the crowd safety effect," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    3. Ahmed Ibrahim Alzahrani & T. Ramayah & Nalini Suppiah & Osama Alfarraj & Nasser Alalwan, 2020. "Modeling Blog Usage From a Developing Country Perspective Using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM)," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(3), pages 21582440209, July.
    4. Hwang, ShinYoung & Kim Seongcheol, 2017. "What triggers the use of mIM service provider’s sequel O2O service extensions?," 14th ITS Asia-Pacific Regional Conference, Kyoto 2017: Mapping ICT into Transformation for the Next Information Society 168494, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    5. Wu Li & Pengya Ai & Annette Ding, 2023. "More Than Just Numbers: How Engagement Metrics Influence User Intention to Pay for Online Knowledge Products," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(1), pages 21582440221, January.
    6. Nitin Walia & Mark Srite & Wendy Huddleston, 2016. "Eyeing the web interface: the influence of price, product, and personal involvement," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 297-333, September.
    7. Mario Silic & Andrea Back, 2016. "The Influence of Risk Factors in Decision-Making Process for Open Source Software Adoption," International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(01), pages 151-185, January.
    8. Arfi, Wissal Ben & Nasr, Imed Ben & Kondrateva, Galina & Hikkerova, Lubica, 2021. "The role of trust in intention to use the IoT in eHealth: Application of the modified UTAUT in a consumer context," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    9. Bilgihan, Anil & Barreda, Albert & Okumus, Fevzi & Nusair, Khaldoon, 2016. "Consumer perception of knowledge-sharing in travel-related Online Social Networks," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 287-296.
    10. Lin Jia & Xiuwei Song & Dianne Hall, 2022. "Influence of Habits on Mobile Payment Acceptance: An Ecosystem Perspective," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 247-266, February.
    11. Song, Lianlian & Hu, Baixue & Mou, Jian, 2021. "Investigating consumer binge-watching behavior: A valence framework perspective," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    12. Leong, Lai-Ying & Hew, Teck-Soon & Ooi, Keng-Boon & Chong, Alain Yee-Loong, 2020. "Predicting the antecedents of trust in social commerce – A hybrid structural equation modeling with neural network approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 24-40.
    13. Judy E. Scott & Dawn G. Gregg & Jae Hoon Choi, 2015. "Lemon complaints: When online auctions go sour," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 177-191, February.
    14. Fang Di & Richards Timothy J. & Grebitus Carola, 2019. "Modeling Product Choices in a Peer Network," Forum for Health Economics & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 1-13, June.
    15. Sara Moussawi & Marios Koufaris & Raquel Benbunan-Fich, 2021. "How perceptions of intelligence and anthropomorphism affect adoption of personal intelligent agents," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 31(2), pages 343-364, June.
    16. Fernanda Leão Ramos & Jorge Brantes Ferreira & Angilberto Sabino de Freitas & Juliana Werneck Rodrigues, 2018. "The Effect of Trust in the Intention to Use m-banking," Brazilian Business Review, Fucape Business School, vol. 15(2), pages 175-191, March.
    17. Jung Lee & Jae-Nam Lee & Bernard C. Y. Tan, 2015. "Antecedents of cognitive trust and affective distrust and their mediating roles in building customer loyalty," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 159-175, February.
    18. Yoon, Hyun Shik & Occeña, Luis G., 2015. "Influencing factors of trust in consumer-to-consumer electronic commerce with gender and age," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 352-363.
    19. Chen, Ying-Hueih & Hsu, I-Chieh & Lin, Chia-Chen, 2010. "Website attributes that increase consumer purchase intention: A conjoint analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 63(9-10), pages 1007-1014, September.
    20. Qin, Li & De-Juan-Vigaray, María D., 2021. "Social commerce: Is interpersonal trust formation similar between U.S.A. and Spain?," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:9:p:3006-:d:350602. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.