Legal Issues in E-Healthcare Systems - E-Healthcare Systems and Wireless Communications - page 27

said Declaration stipulates that “no one shall be
subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy,
family, home, or correspondence, nor to attack
upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has
the right to the protection “. Warren and Brandeis
in 1890 mentioned that this right refers as one's
personality that provides for the protection of the
person and for securing to the individual what
Judge Cooley “right to be let alone” (Warren
& Brandeis, 1890). They further asserted that
regardless of the extrinsic value of one's ideas,
thoughts or creations “the individual is entitled to
decide whether that which is his shall be given to
the public”. Right to privacy may also be defined
as a “condition of being protected from unwanted
access by others, physical access, personal infor-
mation or attention” (Bonavia, & Morton, 1998).
This right further defined to include the elements
of secrecy, anonymity and solitude. Privacy en-
sures that nobody obtains information of a person,
pays attention to it, and gains access to a person
without his consent.
Privacy can be divided into information or
data privacy, bodily privacy, communications
privacy and territorial privacy. Among all the
types of privacy the information or data privacy
has become one of the most crucial issues of great
concern following the advances of Information
and Communication Technology (ICT). More
and more people use ICT to get medical services.
In the course of these activities, huge amount of
private information is being generated, and that
the information generated is used to build personal
profiles. The ability of the technology to build up
personal profile in a matter of minutes, at minimal
cost deters the netizens from full utilization of the
technology in particular for e-health purposes.
Personal data privacy that the users of e-health
systems are concerned includes individual's claim
to control the collection, disclosure and use of
personal data. Information or data privacy allows
the individuals to determine when, and to what
extent, information about them is communicated
to others. For instance Electronic Health Records

(EHR) based system provides efficiency; cost
effectiveness and fault-proof data for medical
diagnoses, treatment and related purposes. In
home care application based wireless body sen-
sor networks, patients are remotely monitored
and provided consultation. The concerned pa-
tient also receives other medical services based
on the date transmitted from him to the medical
practitioner. In EHR medical records are created,
stored, transferred and accessed digitally. It is
a central piece of information. It would have
medical data like radiology images, laboratory
test results, medication, billing history etc. EHR
will be stored in remote servers like primary health
care providers, monitoring centres and data are
also being exchanged for emergency response,
research and other related purposes (Jan, Fang
& Yuguang, 2010).
These medical data are highly confidential and
any abuses can cause difficulties for patients in
getting insurance and employment. It also could
lead to discrimination for having certain types of
illnesses. In the body sensor networks patients'
location privacy should be guaranteed whenever
emergency responses are not required. Otherwise it
is possible to track patients' whereabouts through
IP addresses of PDA used in wireless body sensors.
In addition to protection of patients' location pri-
vacy, any medical related communication should
also be anonymous.
Most of the companies do data profiling
using various technologies, when they collect
and analyse the data for present and future use.
Data profiling involves profile generation and
application. In data profile generation, the data
are processed and analyzed in search of patterns,
sequences, relationship etc. The result would be
a set of assumptions based on some probability.
The application is making of decision about per-
sons based on the profile generated. The profiling
depends on data from various sources. The data
could be collected directly from data subject or
from data bases maintained by third party. These
data could be a mixture of facts and opinions.