Miss Kavisha Shah1,2
1Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre, 2Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, 3Sydney Health Law, The University of Sydney, 4Sydney Health Ethics, Faculty of Medicine and Health, The University of Sydney, 5Haematology Department, Royal North Shore Hospital
The increasing digitisation of health care has enabled the collection of vast amounts of data about patient outcomes and clinical performance. Electronic medical records have allowed for the isolation of specific clinical indicators such as re-infection and readmission rates. There is growing interest in using electronic health data for audit and feedback activities and to inform practice improvement (‘practice analytics’). Engagement in practice analytics has been tempered by concerns that medical records do not adequately capture the clinical encounter. Clinicians remain particularly concerned about the apportionment of blame in disciplinary conferences, patient-led litigation, and possibly public prosecutions. This fear of misrepresentation is compounded with other ethical and legal issues including privacy, confidentiality, mandatory disclosure and more. While some health organisations circumvent these complex discussions by aggregating and de-identifying data, individual clinicians or departments can still be held responsible for issues caused by system-level factors (e.g., lack of staff training).
This presentation will present preliminary findings from a scoping review on the legal and regulatory framework governing use of health data for secondary purposes in Australia. The review will also explore current and previous attempts at using health data for reflective practices. These summaries will be used to identify incongruities between data-driven approaches to practice reflection and the ethico-legal obligations of clinicians and health organisations. This presentation will aim to start a discussion about how health stakeholders can be better supported from a policy perspective when engaging with practice analytics.
Biography:
Bio to come