A4 Refereed article in a conference publication
A viewpoint for More Ethical Approach in Healthcare Information system Development and Procurement: The Four Principles.
Authors: Koskinen Jani, Heimo Olli, Kimppa Kai
Editors: Barbosa S, Chen P, Cuzzocrea A, Du X, Filipe J, Kara O, Kotenko I, Sivalingam, M, Slezak D, Washio T, Yang X
Publisher: Springer Verlag
Publishing place: Berlin
Publication year: 2012
Journal: Communications in Computer and Information Science
Book title : Communications in Computer and Information Science
Series title: Communications in Computer and Information Science
Volume: 313
First page : 1
Last page: 9
Number of pages: 9
ISBN: 978-3-642-323849-7
eISBN: 978-3-642-32850-3
ISSN: 1865-0929
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32850-3_1
Web address : http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-32850-3_1
Healthcare is a field where the influence of ethics needs to be strong.
It should also cover the area of information system development in healthcare.
Great amounts or research about ethics, healthcare and information system de-
velopment and combinations of those can be found. However, the actual devel-
opment of healthcare information systems has a serious lack of understanding
of ethical codes of healthcare and it seems that financial values may bypass
ethical ones. Several examples of the consequences to healthcare information
systems, in which financial values in conjunction with technological determin-
ism are controlling the decisions, are presented and critiqued.
The four principles of medicine: beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy
and justice are seen as a promising basis for analysis of information system de-
velopment in healthcare. The four principles seem to be suitable for healthcare
professionals and – as discussed in this paper - for information system develop-
ers. Hence these principles could be held as the common ethical ground for
both. If these principles could be put into actual use in information system de-
velopment of healthcare sector many problems faced would be solved, or at
least some of the main problems in it can be revealed.