ICT in medicine and health care: assessing social, ethical and legal issues.

Continuous developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) have resulted in an increasing use of these technologies in the practice of medicine and in the provision of medical care. This paper presents a series of perspectives from different areas of expertise on some of the ways in which ICT has changed the social picture in respect of the practice of medicine. The aim of the paper is to provide a context for further debate, in the form of a Panel Session, where the issue of Human Choice and Computing can be discussed with reference to a set of specific scenarios. The authors of this paper represent a wide variety of disciplines including law, ethics, medicine, philosophy and computer science, thus bringing a broad perspective to begin the discussions. The aim of the session is to provoke further discussion, encouraging input from other disciplines respresented by the participants, with a view to identifying the level of human choice in a social arena which has at its heart a vulnerable community. In this environment, and in this era, the ‘social’ in social informatics has never been more important

The state of the art of the blockchain ethics in healthcare: A systematic literature review

Blockchain is a software innovation which is based on a cryptographically secured, decentralised, and distributed storage of data. The technological breakthrough was done as a part of and became familiar through cryptocurrencies, where it is used to openly store currency transactions among its users. Blockchain technology has been since proposed and used in various domains ranging from open contracts to electronic voting—as well as in various purposes in eHealth, medical and well-being applications. However, its usage in these sectors possesses several ethical questions as these environments are full of personal and private patient information. To study the state-of-the-art of the blockchain ethics in healthcare, this study presents a systematic literature study (SLR) on this phenomenon. By collecting the relevant primary studies from Scopus, the results show that the utilisation of blockchain is swiftly maturing with new research and applications published constantly in this domain. However, the ethical discussion related to the use of blockchain technologies is still taking its baby steps in healthcare. Despite a few openings, ethical research is practically non-existing when compared against the full extant literature on the topic. Therefore, remarkable amount of further work is needed to cover the potential ethical questions related to the adoption and use of the technology.Blockchain is a software innovation which is based on a cryptographically secured, decentralised, and distributed storage of data. The technological breakthrough was done as a part of and became familiar through cryptocurrencies, where it is used to openly store currency transactions among its users. Blockchain technology has been since proposed and used in various domains ranging from open contracts to electronic voting—as well as in various purposes in eHealth, medical and well-being applications. However, its usage in these sectors possesses several ethical questions as these environments are full of personal and private patient information. To study the state-of-the-art of the blockchain ethics in healthcare, this study presents a systematic literature study (SLR) on this phenomenon. By collecting the relevant primary studies from Scopus, the results show that the utilisation of blockchain is swiftly maturing with new research and applications published constantly in this domain. However, the ethical discussion related to the use of blockchain technologies is still taking its baby steps in healthcare. Despite a few openings, ethical research is practically non-existing when compared against the full extant literature on the topic. Therefore, remarkable amount of further work is needed to cover the potential ethical questions related to the adoption and use of the technology

Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGSOFT International Workshop on Software-Intensive Business: Start-ups, Platforms, and Ecosystems

Hub companies (e.g. Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and Google) rule the internet. They are de facto monopolies in their area of operations. They shape the future in which we live. And, it seems there is nothing we can do about that, as traditional economies of extreme scale – in which eventually the size of a corporation starts to be a hindrance, rather than an advantage – do not apply to them. On the contrary, they keep growing and growing and thus gaining stronger and stronger strangle hold over their respective areas of commerce and influence. This leads to unethical results, where the corporations spin out of any control, national or international. In this paper we give reasons to this phenomenon and lament the future of the internet – unless something drastic is done to change this.<br /

Ethical questions related to using netnography as research method

Netnography is a relatively new research method, which adapts research techniques of ethnography to study cultures and communities through computer-mediated communications. It has become a popular research method in marketing research during the early 21st century. However, the use of netnography in the field of information systems (later referred as IS) has not been studied to great extent. Thus, we have conducted a systematic literature review to investigate the ethical practices of netnographic research in the field of IS. To analyse the ethical practices of netnographic research and discussion surrounding it, we have collected 52 articles which use netnography either as their sole research method or as their completing research method. These articles were selected from 77 IS journals. Our findings indicate that netnography is an emerging research method which is still searching the shape of its ethical guidelines. Researchers, who use netnography, do not completely agree on the ethically just manner of conducting netnography. However, it is apparent that certain ways of conducting netnography are often considered to be ethically just where as some other ways might be often considered to not be ethically just.</p

Societal Implications of Community-Oriented Policing and Technology

In developing a semi-automated decision support system using cutting-edge visual technologies to aid police intelligence analysts (the VALCRI project) it was recognised that addressing ethical, privacy and legal issues would need to be considered from the start. From the beginning, experts in these fields were embedded in the project and externally an independent ethics board was established and a number of ethical concerns were identified. Addressing the concerns presented some challenges both in terms of process and product and are the subject of this paper. Insights about these problems can contribute to other research projects beyond the area of crime visualization, for instance addressing concerns such as logging processes for auditing and evidence in other sensitive projects.</div

Security, Privacy'); DROP TABLE users; -- and Forced Trust in the Information Age?

In this study, we discuss forced trust in the context of information systems, information society and surveillance. Trust definitions and concepts pertinent to the discussion are examined and portrayed with case examples of forced trust in different situations that make up the information society. As the forced trust appears mostly in the governmental information systems, we reflected the concept from the security and privacy point-of-view that are important for the users of such systems in the current age of information. We portray the trust landscape of critical governmental information systems and discuss forced trust in the context of Internet infrastructure and mass surveillance. We provide a glimpse of an information society that combines security, trust, and privacy, while also providing discussion on what kind of trust dynamics such a utopia would require.</p

Addressing Ethical Challenges of Creating New Technology for Criminal Investigation: The VALCRI Project

In developing a semi-automated decision support system using cutting-edge visual technologies to aid police intelligence analysts (the VALCRI project) it was recognised that addressing ethical, privacy and legal issues would need to be considered from the start. From the beginning, experts in these fields were embedded in the project and externally an independent ethics board was established and a number of ethical concerns were identified. Addressing the concerns presented some challenges both in terms of process and product and are the subject of this paper. Insights about these problems can contribute to other research projects beyond the area of crime visualization, for instance addressing concerns such as logging processes for auditing and evidence in other sensitive projects