Digital Epidemiology

As digital epidemiology becomes more prevalent, what are some of the ethical considerations of using big data in public health surveillance? 

Public health surveillance entails the regular collection, analysis, and interpretation of data related to health issues, which is used to identify strange events of public health significance, as well as counteracting or controlling disease or injury (Lee, 2019). The deployment of digital technology has increased the new health-related sources such as online data, financial records, and social media profiles, among others. Therefore digital epidemiology brings out the notion that the availability of health-related big data will influence a positive impact on biomedical research. However, the use of big data approaches to human health raises ethical challenges such as the risk to compromise privacy, effects on public demand for openness, and personal autonomy (Ambord, Favre, Faeh & Chiolero, 2014).

Therefore ethical considerations are essential so as to overcome these ethical challenges. As such, the ERC members will need to be equipped with the appropriate tools that will help them inspect how data will be gathered to ensure the process is in line with the security standards of how the data will be stored and shared, the mode of quantifying uncertainty and the classification systems that will be used (Lee, 2019). In addition, the ERCs are pretty much associated with the pre-digital era of biomedical research, and therefore, they should not be the only body that will be involved in the ethical oversight of the health-related big data research. As such, there is a need to expand the sensitivity of ethical oversight by bringing on board other complementary governance mechanisms like data security committees (Lee, 2019).  

Since digital epidemiology entails access to global data, it means that it will be less costly than using traditional public health approaches. Therefore, the approach could be beneficial to communities that belong to poorer parts of the world as it will assist in the early detection of diseases (Ambord, Favre, Faeh & Chiolero, 2014). In this line of thought, the ethical consideration of using big data will be the moral obligation whereby the method of data collection and processing ought to respect the rights and interests of people from these diverse communities (Lee, 2019). As such, there will be a need to determine if the standards of privacy may take different forms or whether the minimum core of uniform standards is partially justified (Lee, 2019).

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References

Ambord, C., Favre, F., Faeh, D., & Chiolero, A. (2014). Public health surveillance with big data: assessing diabetes trends using medico-administrative data. European Journal of Public Health, 24(suppl_2). https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/cku166.133

Lee, L. M. (2019). Public Health Surveillance: Ethical Considerations. The Oxford Handbook of Public Health Ethics, 319-330. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190245191.013.28