Refereed article in conference proceedings (A4)
Factors Affecting the Availability of Electronic Patient Records for Secondary Purposes – A Case Study
List of Authors: Antti Vikström, Sanaz Rahimi Moosavi, Hans Moen, Tapio Salakoski, Sanna Salanterä
Editors: Hongxiu Li, Pirkko Nykänen, Reima Suomi, Nilmini Wickramasinghe, Gunilla Widén, Ming Zhan
Conference name: International Conference on Well-Being in the Information Society
Place: Gewerbestrasse 11, CH-6330 Cham (ZG), Switzerland
Publication year: 2016
Book title *: Building Sustainable Health Ecosystems: 6th International Conference on Well-Being in the Information Society, WIS 2016, Tampere, Finland, September 16-18, 2016, Proceedings
Title of series: Communications in Computer and Information Science
Volume number: 636
Start page: 47
End page: 56
Number of pages: 10
ISBN: 978-3-319-44671-4
eISBN: 978-3-319-44672-1
ISSN: 1865-0929
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44672-1_5
URL: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44672-1_5
The purpose of this paper is to explore secondary use of Finnish electronic patient record (EPR) data in the context of clinical research and product development. Further, EPR availability enhancing procedures and technologies are analysed. The sensitive nature of patient data restricts the use and availability of EPR data in secondary purposes. A case study of secondary users of EPR data was conducted in Southwest Finland. Semi-structured interviews were used to evaluate the effectiveness of procedures and technologies implemented to protect EPR data. In total, 9 experts were interviewed from the fields of academic research, product development, and health management. The results show that three main factors affecting the availability of EPR data in secondary use are data management, privacy preserving, and secondary users. Challenges included in data management concerned the effect of demanding data request procedures and external information system service providers. Two privacy preserving approaches were identified: the use of altered data and protected EPR processing environment. These approaches provide higher availability or more valuable content, both affecting possible secondary users and use cases.