Farzaneh Aminpour,
Volume 1, Issue 1 (7-2008)
Abstract
Information is the symbol of the present age due to the significant development in accessing, processing, storage and transferring information. Information societies have been formed by the widespread utilization of information and communication technologies in human social life and generally focus on the computer systems and information networks. Nowadays, various technologies of medical informatics comprise an important component of the management infrastructures of health care systems. Medical informatics is the development and assessment of specific methods and systems for acquisition, processing and analyzing patients' data with the help of knowledge and information from scientific researches. Moreover, it intends to increase access, improve quality and decrease the costs of care through decreasing chronological and geographical limitations. On the other hand, ethics have been always considered as a basic component of these systems. The increasing development of digital technologies and their application in health information management provides numerous benefits however, it encounters health care managers with new challenges in the information societies. These challenges may has been mainly caused by the conflicts among ethical principles by themselves or disregarding them in the field of medical informatics. Therefore, careful consideration of info ethics as well as beneficence, autonomy, fidelity and justice is essential to overcome those conflicts in the information societies.
Jafar Nory Yoshanloey, Shobeir Azadbakht,
Volume 15, Issue 1 (3-2022)
Abstract
One of the key principles in medical ethics, which has significant social effects, is the confidentiality of medical information. Given the significance of this principle, the legal systems of different countries have considered and recognized the principle of confidentiality. The existence of the principle of confidentiality can be viewed for two groups of people: those who are alive and those who have died. Two different bases underlie the recognition of confidentiality for each group. In Iranian and French law, this principle is applied to protect the privacy of living persons. While, for deceased people, it is applied for the public interests of the community and to ensure the no-harm rule. The purpose of this article is to examine how the principle of confidentiality is contemplated for these two groups of persons in French and Iranian law. There is an explicit provision in French law regarding the living and the deceased persons. In Iranian law, however, the principle of confidentiality is only recognized for living persons; However, despite the silence of the Iranian legislator, the principle of confidentiality can be extended to the deceased people. Nevertheless, this article attempts to briefly examine the concept and basis of the principle of confidentiality and then describe the position of the two legal systems of France and Iran.
