A View Into Social Media And Healthcare - 1581 Words

We Can, but Dare We? A View into Social Media and Healthcare â€Å"According to the Measuring the Information Society Report 2014 by the International Telecommunication Union, nearly 3,000 million people use the Internet, which is more than 40% of the world s population (7,200 million). There are almost as many mobile-cellular subscriptions (6.9 billion) as people on Earth, more than three quarters of them (5.4 billion) in the developing world, and more than half (3.6 billion) in the Asia-Pacific region† (Fernà ¡ndez-Luque Bau 2015). With the ever-increasing use of technology, it was only a matter of time before it was integrated in the way healthcare functions and communicates. This media is increasingly becoming a tool for supporting†¦show more content†¦Protecting Patient Rights In 1996, The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted to protects patient’s medical record, as well as exchanges between healthcare professional abou t patient care and treatment. In addition to HIPAA, the Privacy Rule was published in December 2000, but later modified in August 2002. â€Å"This Rule set national standards for the protection of individually identifiable health information by three types of covered entities: health plans, health care clearinghouses, and healthcare providers who conduct the standard healthcare transactions electronically† (Secretary n.d.). The Privacy Rule covers the individual’s past, present, and future physical or mental health or condition; provision of healthcare; and the payment of provision from electronic, paper, or/and oral media. Violation of this act can cause a patient economic harm, embarrassment, and discrimination, which violates the medical bioethics of nonmaleficence – to do no harm. There are two ways in which a healthcare professional can include actual patient information that are acceptable by HIPAA regulations. One, a patient can sign a consent form allowing their personal information to be shared on a social outlet. Second, a patient’s personal information can be de-identified. De-identified health information neither identifies nor provides any practical way to identify an individual, a