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A View Into Social Media And Healthcare

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We Can, but Dare We? A View into Social Media and Healthcare “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” (Fernández-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 about patient care and treatment. In addition to HIPAA, the Privacy Rule was published in December 2000, but later modified in August 2002. “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

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