Healthcare Informatics Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Healthcare Informatics - Essay Example One critical question that one should reflect on is whether the patients are aware of the privacy risks involved in exposing their personal health data? (Chbeir & Al Bouna, 2013). Or whether there are appropriate policies for these social sites that guarantee the safety of the information to avoid health data security breaches that may turn costly on the part of the information owners? Awareness and education of the users are of paramount importance in mitigating the privacy risks. Li (2013) observes that there policy implications of using the health social networking sites and the stakeholders and the policy makers should elaborate them to protect the privacy of online health data. The health social networking sites are left to decide what information will be kept private and what will be shared. If there existed knowledge about the privacy settings, patients would be able to restrict the health data they want to keep secret. Healthcare Informatics After reading the work by Li (2013), I strongly support the option of privacy by education for mitigating the privacy risks surrounding the health data shared on the social networking sites. It should be noted that the health data collected from the social sites attracted unlimited commercial interests that can be used as business opportunities for medical research companies and partners.