Describe 4 ethical issues that arise when storing electronic information about individuals.

1. Privacy and Confidentiality: When a company collects private or confidential information about another person, there is always a chance that the information can be stolen, especially if the information is stored in an online database. For instance, medical facilities may require private and confidential information to be disclosed, but in most cases privacy is kept unless permission is given by the patient to disclose information to someone else. While only authorized individuals should have access to patient information, lack of security measures could put patients at risk.
2. Security Breaches: As mentioned when discussing Privacy and Confidentiality, a security breach can completely destroy a patient or customers privacy. To mitigate these risks, it’s best for all databases to have security measures in place such as firewalls, and intrusion detections, and these measures should be tested regularly.
3. System implementation: In healthcare, the implementation of Electronic Health Records is extremely important, and a poor system interface implementation can cause major ethical issues such as loss of confidence by patients and poor quality of care. It’s extremely important that system interface is designed well so that it ensures patient or customer safety, and regular maintenance and testing is needed to ensure there are no major risk concerns.
4. Data Inaccuracies: If a data transfer is conducted, and a loss or destruction of data is discovered, this could cause many ethical issues. When discussing healthcare patients, it can lead to inaccurate patient information, which can cause inaccurate billing for insurance companies on services not provided, and cause many issues between the patient and insurance company.