Ethical issues in handling patients' information in electronic healthcare system / Sapiah Sulaiman

This thesis focuses on analyzing the ethical issues in the hospitals that use
manual system (Hospital Sultanah Aminah, Johor Bahru) and computerized
system (Hospital Selayang, Selangor). The objective of this research is to
identify the differences in handling or managing patients' information between
these two hospitals. Questionnaires were distributed to the healthcare
professionals who work in Surgical Wards in both hospitals. Furthermore,
interview sessions were conducted on the staffs in IT Department and Medical
Record Department to gain more information about the level of security
information. On the whole, it can be said that 67% of the respondents in
Hospital Sultanah Aminah perform their daily operations according to ethical
guidelines compared to 58% at Hospital Selayang. Finally from this research
an ethical framework will be derived which was improved from the Malaysian
Medical Council code of professional conduct to adapt to the new situation.
This research will help to identify the level of information of accessibility by
usage of this information and to improve the safeguarding of the consumers'
privacy in relationships with third parties. Hopefully, it will help to increase
the patients' trust to the hospitals, and offer new experience in online health
information and services to the patients.