Information technology is transforming the practices of medicine, nursing, and biomedical research. Computers can now render diagnoses and prognoses more accurately than humans. The concepts of privacy and confidentiality are evolving as data moves from paper to silicon to clouds. Big data promises financial wealth, as well as riches of information and benefits to science and public health. Online access and mobile apps provide patients with an unprecedented connection to their health and health records. This transformation is as unsettling as it is exhilarating. With chapters spanning issues from professionalism and quality to mobile health and bioinformatics, this book establishes what will become the “core curriculum” in ethics and health informatics, a growing field which encourages truly inter- and multidisciplinary inquiry.
Kenneth W. Goodman, Ph.D., is Professor of Medicine and jointly of Philosophy, Public Health Sciences, Health Informatics, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Nursing and Health Studies. He directs the University of Miami Bioethics Program, a WHO Collaborating Center for Ethics and Global Health Policy, and the Florida Bioethics Network. His research has focused on ethics and health information technology and on ethics in epidemiology and public health. He has also emphasized international projects and has worked extensively in Latin America and Europe. He has served on the external ethics committee for the CDC and is a member of the American College of Epidemiology’s Ethics Committee. He is the author of Ethics and Evidence-Based Medicine (Cambridge University Press, 2003) and editor of The Case of Terri Schiavo: Ethics, Politics, and Death in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 2009).
