Customer privacy on UK healthcare websites.

Full Abstract

Privacy has been and continues to be one of the key challenges of an age devoted to the accumulation, processing, and mining of electronic information. In particular, privacy of healthcare-related information is seen as a key issue as health organizations move towards the electronic provision of services. The aim of the research detailed in this paper has been to analyse privacy policies on popular UK healthcare-related websites to determine the extent to which consumer privacy is protected. The author has combined approaches (such as approaches focused on usability, policy content, and policy quality) used in studies by other researchers on e-commerce and US healthcare websites to provide a comprehensive analysis of UK healthcare privacy policies. The author identifies a wide range of issues related to the protection of consumer privacy through his research analysis using quantitative results. The main outcomes from the author's research are that only 61% of healthcare-related websites in their sample group posted privacy policies. In addition, most of the posted privacy policies had poor readability standards and included a variety of privacy vulnerability statements. Overall, the author's findings represent significant current issues in relation to healthcare information protection on the Internet. The hope is that raising awareness of these results will drive forward changes in the industry, similar to those experienced with information quality.

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Author information

Author/s: Mundy, Darren P (DP);

Affiliation: Centre for Internet Computing, University of Hull, Scarborough, UK. d.mundy(-atsign-)hull.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Medical informatics and the Internet in medicine (Med Inform Internet Med), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-Sep; vol 31 (issue 3) : pp 175-93

Dates: Created 2006/09/06; Completed 2007/01/17;

PMID: 16954055, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Confidentiality
Great Britain
Internet - organization & administration

Internet - organization & administration
Medical Informatics
Policy Making

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