ETHICS AND BIOMEDICAL INFORMATION

Ethical rules are similar for physicians in most countries that follow the Hippocratic oath. They have no formal legal force, but can be use d as a reference to provide answers to solve individual cases. It appe ars erroneous to believe that privacy is about information. It is abou t relationship. In medicine, there is a contract between a patient and a physician, where health care personnel has to respect secrecy, whil e integrity and availability of information should be obtained for con tinuity of care. These somewhat contradictory objectives have to be ap plied very carefully to computerised biomedical information. Ethical p rinciples have to be made clear to everyone, and society should lake t he necessary steps to organise their enforcement. Several examples are given in the delivery of health care, telediagnosis, patient follow-u p. clinical research as well as possible breakthroughs that could jeop ardise privacy, using biomedical information. (C) 1998 Elsevier Scienc e Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.