OTTAWA, July 8 (UPI) -- Even during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, doctors in Canada were reluctant to disclose identifiable patient data to protect patient privacy, researchers say.
Dr. Khaled El Emam, the Canada Research Chair in Electronic Health Information at the University of Ottawa, and the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, said the study findings are important to prepare for the inevitable next pandemic.
"There is a perceived trade-off between the public good and individual privacy. If we sway too much on the public good side, then all people's health data would be made available without conditions," El Emam said in a statement. "If we sway too much on the individual privacy side then no health data would be shared without consent, but then this would potentially increase public health risks."
Five focus groups with 37 family doctors from across Canada provided insights into the reasons they were reluctant to share patient data. The physicians said they were concerned about the privacy of their patients, and did not know whether the data uses would be limited to dealing with the pandemic.
They did not perceive that they would get direct benefits back to them and their patients from giving data to public health and there were concerns about how the data could be used to evaluate their performance, the study says.
"Patient data needs to be properly anonymized, and health care practitioners must be provided with timely and actionable feedback," El Emam said. "It should not be taken for granted that the medical community is willing to give data unconditionally."
