Ethics and Information Technology : A Case-Based Approach to a Health Care System in Transition

This series is directed to health care professionals who are leading the tra- formation of health care by using information and knowledge. Launched in 1988 as Computers in Health Care, the series offers a broad range of titles: some addressed to specific professions such as nursing, medicine, and health administration; others to special areas of practice such as trauma and radi- ogy. Still other books in the series focus on interdisciplinary issues, such as the computer-based patient record, electronic health records, and networked health care systems. Renamed Health Informatics in 1998 to reflect the rapid evolution in the discipline now known as health informatics, the series will continue to add titles that contribute to the evolution of the field. In the series, eminent - perts, serving as editors or authors, offer their accounts of innovations in health informatics. Increasingly, these accounts go beyond hardware and so- ware to address the role of information in influencing the transformation of healthcare delivery systems around the world. The series also increasingly focuses on “peopleware” and the organizational, behavioral, and societal changes that accompany the diffusion of information technology in health services environments.

From the reviews:

"‘Ethics and Information Technology’ ... a case-based approach to the ethical and social issues of health informatics, with a special focus on online health care and health information in the Internet and the World Wide Web. ... A collection of cases ... provides ideal study material covering an impressive variety of different facets of health information technology. Several questions guide the reader through the discussion ... . An extended appendix with ethical standards for health web sites complements this extremely timely and useful publication." (Georg Marckmann, Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, Vol. 7 (1), 2004)