Abstract
After reading this chapter, you should know the answers to these questions:
Why is ethics important to informatics?What are the leading ethical issues that arise in health care informatics?What are examples of appropriate and inappropriate uses and users for health-related software?Why does the establishment of standards touch on ethical issues?Why does system evaluation involve ethical issues?What challenges does informatics pose for patient and provider confidentiality?How can the tension between the obligation to protect confidentiality and that to share data be minimized?How might computational health care alter the traditional provider–patient relationship?What ethical issues arise at the intersection of informatics and managed care?What are the leading issues in the debate over governmental regulation of health care computing tools?