University Assignment: Ethical Issues Arising from ICT in Healthcare

This report delves into the ethical implications of using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in healthcare, specifically focusing on the challenges faced by nurses using smartphones. It identifies two primary ethical concerns: the potential for breaches of patient information privacy and the risk of unauthorized sharing of Protected Health Information (PHI). The analysis explores how data breaches can occur through hacking and unauthorized access, emphasizing the vulnerability of patient data stored on mobile devices. The report further discusses the implications of nurses potentially sharing PHI, which violates HIPAA regulations. The evaluation of these issues suggests the implementation of firewalls and cloud-based data storage to mitigate data breaches and recommends restricting the use of personal smartphones in clinical settings to protect patient data. The report concludes by underscoring the importance of addressing these ethical considerations to ensure responsible and secure use of ICT in nursing practice.

Running head: ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FROM USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FROM USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FROM USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
2 important ethical issues.................................................................................................................2
Analysis of the ethical issue............................................................................................................2
Evaluate the issue............................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................4
References........................................................................................................................................5

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ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FROM USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
Introduction
Smart phones are one of the most highly accepted technology that has been benefitting
the processing of regular lifestyle. Convenience that is gained by the users of the smart phones
provide is really high, making these devices highly popular among the nurses and other
personnel in the medicine sector. This report will discuss about the 2 important ethical issues that
are present in the functioning of the smart phone usage by the nurses. Analysis of the ethical
issues will also be considered in this report. This report will also provide a vivid evaluation
regarding the issues that are present.
2 important ethical issues
The 3 important ethical issues that are present in case the nurses use smart phones are as
follows: -
 Privacy of patient information might be at stake
 Sending of PHI (Protected Health Information) might also take place
Analysis of the ethical issue
Privacy of patient information might be at stake
The main ethical issue that lies in usage of smart phone by the nurses for the proposing of
the data management system will be having issue regarding breaching of the data. In case the
data base of the mobile is hacked by the imposters the data that will be stored in the data base
will be accessed by them without authentication and authorization of the user of the smart [1].
This unauthorized access of the data sets that are present in the smart phone will provide the data
that are collected during the treatment process. This will also lead to the fact that patient personal

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ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FROM USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
data will also be gained by the imposters. This might not be liked by the patients themselves.
These data might be affecting the patients in a negative manner as well.
Sending of PHI (Protected Health Information) might also take place
As per HIPAA, the protected data must not be provided to other people. The data of the
patients cannot be shared until and unless the patients grant them permission [2]. In case the
nurses who were recording the data turn out to be an imposter or provide the imposters with the
data for a certain amount of money, data breaching will be direct and no privacy maintenance
will be present. This is one of the major reason that the data that are stored in the database of the
nurses will be available for the imposters. Although this might lead to the termination off the
nurse from the hospital organization but this will not change the fact that privacy of the patients
will be at stake
Evaluate the issue
Privacy of patient information might be at stake
With several digital platforms entering in the market, tools that are used for hacking of
the digitals platforms are also increasing. This leads to the fact that the data that are present in
the database of the nurse will be easily accessible by the imposters [3]. This leads to the fact that
management of the data will get difficult for the nurses. With least robustness in the framework
of the smartphone database, gaining access to the data that are present in the database gets easier
for the imposters. This can be considered as one of the major reason of data breaching that will
affect the privacy of the patient data. This will lead to the incident that the data that are not to be
accessed without proper authentication will get accessed and hence ethical issue and dilemma
arises. This issue can be mitigated with the help of implementation of firewall in the data base

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ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FROM USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
and storing the data of smart phones used by all the nurses in a cloud system. With firewall
implemented in the cloud system it will be difficult for imposters to break in the device and gain
access to the data.
Sending of PHI (Protected Health Information) might also take place
Nurses who are involved in the treatment process gets access to the data of their treat and
stores the same in their smart phones for their future usage purpose. In case the nurses are bribed
for providing the data to the imposters they might provide the same to the imposters [4]. But
according to HIPAA, providing protected data to other people without the consent of the patient
is treated as ethical issue. This issue can be mitigated by not allowing nurses to use their personal
phones during the treatment period. Providing separate smart phones to the nurses for capturing
data will reduce this issue [5].
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be stated that proper functioning of the smart phones are
really important for avoiding ethical issues in the field of nursing. This imbibes the fact that the
data that are stored in the database of the smart phones can be access by the imposters and data
breaching can take place. These are the mentioned ethical issue and recommendations for
avoiding the same are also stated in this report.

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ETHICAL ISSUES ARISING FROM USE OF ICT TECHNOLOGIES
References
[1]A. Eccles, "Telecare technologies and isolation: some ethical issues", Smart Homecare
Technology and TeleHealth, p. 81, 2015. Available: 10.2147/shtt.s56244.
[2]G. Chaturvedi, S. Chaturvedi and M. Agarwal, "Forestalling Against Data
Breaching", International Journal Of Engineering And Computer Science, 2015. Available:
10.18535/ijecs/v4i8.08.
[3]G. Zheng, M. Awan and S. Kim, "An Extensible Healthcare Context Engine Based on Smart
Phones", Lecture Notes on Software Engineering, pp. 81-86, 2014. Available:
10.7763/lnse.2014.v2.99.
[4]S. Jones, "Teaching smart phone ethics", ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society, vol. 45, no. 3,
pp. 445-452, 2016. Available: 10.1145/2874239.2874305.
[5]"Hold the Phone: FDA to Regulate Smart Phone Health Applications", International Journal
of ChemTech Research, 2018. Available: 10.20902/ijctr.2018.110211.