Dr. Najeeb Alshorbaji

Profile:
Coordinator, Knowledge Management and Sharing for EMRO
WHO

Profile: Dr. Al-Shorbaji joined the World Health Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (EMR) in 1988 when he worked for its Regional Centre for Environmental Health Activities in Amman, Jordan as Information Scientist. He has been working for the Regional Office since 1994 in different capacities. Currently he is the Coordinator, Knowledge Management and Sharing for EMRO.
In his current capacity at the Regional Office, Dr. Al-Shorbaji is responsible for coordination, development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the Regional Programme on Knowledge Management and Sharing in the areas of health informatics, medical librarianship, publishing, language services, health and biomedical literature, medical records, telecommunications and telemedicine. 
Dr. Al-Shorbaji has developed in collaboration with other WHO offices the WHO Global Private Network, the wide area network of WHO Representative Offices, EMR Knowledge Network and e-health projects in the Region in addition to technical assistance to many countries to develop their health libraries, telemedicine, healthcare informatics, electronic health records, health decision support centers and geographic information systems. He is a member of over 15 professional societies and associations. Has published over 80 conference papers, chapters and articles. His special interest is the use of information and communication technology for health and development.

Title: Legal and ethical aspects of e-health

Abstract: E-health is defined as “the use, in the health sector, of digital data-transmitted, stored and retrieved electronically-for clinical, educational and administrative purposes, both at the local site and at a distance”. The mushrooming expansion of e-health services and activities has made it of prime importance to consider the legal and ethical aspects of the delivery of these activities and services.

One of the recognized obstacles facing e-health implementation is the lack of national e-health policies, strategies, plans and legislative framework in many countries of the Region. E-health will only flourish if the right governance and legal framework are in place.

The HIPAA Security Regulations require that any health plan, health care clearing-house or health care provider that electronically maintains or transmits individually identifiable health information must adopt policies, practices and procedures to protect the confidentiality of that information.
The different legal aspects that might be considered are:

1. Physician (healthcare provider)-patient (citizen) relationships on the Internet; 
2. Link between e-government, e-commerce, e-banking,  etc and e-health; 
3. Liability issues in the practice of telemedicine: medical malpractice on the Internet; 
4. Quality aspects of health information on the Internet; 
5. Protection of data in electronic health records; and
6. Cross-border processing of health data (personal and public data).

Ethical aspects in e-health is another area in which major concerns have aroused.  The e-health code of ethics and the many forms of it in many courtiers have emerged in response to a need in an area where legal frameworks are not strong enough.
Data security is another major aspect that any legal framework in e-health needs to consider. This includes:

1. Authenticity: to know and vet the identity of the specific sender of a message or initiator of a transaction, and the identity of its intended receiver;

• Integrity: to be totally sure that the contents of the message or transaction have not been changed;
• Confidentiality: to ascertain that nobody, other than the sender and the intended recipient, has the ability to view, copy or otherwise know the contents of the message or transaction;

4. Privacy: to ensure that personal health information is not used or disclosed inappropriately leaving the individual vulnerable to unwanted exposure, stigma and discrimination;  

• Non-repudiation: to maintain an unequivocal record of a message or a transaction such that neither its initiator nor its recipient is able to later deny the message exchange or the transaction.

The draft International Convention on Telemedicine and Tele-health was proposed by the International Bar Association Section on Legal Practice in July 1999 as a tool to support implementation of e-health in countries.