2018/08/30 by Georg Schulte, Schulte, Georg, Ursula Hübner +3
Health Professions · Medicine · #610 Medical sciences #Health and Medical Studies #Informationstechnologie #Medical and Health Sciences Research #Medicine #electronic communication across settings #ethical demands #ethical principles #ethische Anforderungen #ethische Prinzipien #information technology #transsektorale Kommunikation
paper · doi:10.3205/mibe000186
openalex publication_date 2018/08/30 · openalex created_date 2023/10/04 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Electronic communication across healthcare settings is one of the essential pillars of eHealth. It is a human activity, which is supposed to improve care for individuals and communities. Ethics evaluates such human activities regarding their impact and the values and norms that form its basis. Thereby, the impact both on individuals and communities is regarded. In health- and social care, the principles of autonomy, damage prevention, welfare, and justice are regarded as standards. Thus, the questions to be addressed to electronic communication across settings from an ethical point of view have to be defined, in order to examine if it meets ethical demands. At first, statements referring to health information and technology in the context of ethics were extracted from publications found in a systematic literature analysis, and then checked, for which potential questions they offered answers. The resulting statements were phrased as questions relating to the five principles mentioned above. Seven questions could be derived from the statements of the literature, and could be associated to the ethical principles. Based on these results, further research can investigate, whether technical applications for cross-sectorial electronic communication is able to improve the welfare of individuals as well as that of communities, from which patients, professionals and the whole healthcare system could profit.