PRIVACY

A major challenge of brokering in open ubiquitous healthcare environments is to support privacy. In collecting the massive amounts of health information gathered by ubiquitous healthcare systems, close attention needs to be paid to who controls what is gathered, who has access to it, and where/how/whether that information is stored.

Privacy and the confidentiality of medical data, information, knowledge and services have to be especially safeguarded. Healthcare professionals and care-providers prefer to have the ability of controlling the collection, retention and distribution of information about themselves. A recent survey (The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, 2008) shows that 67% of the American national respondents are concerned about the privacy of their personal medical records, 52% fear that their health insurance information might be used by employers to limit job opportunities while only 30% are willing to share their personal health information with health professionals not directly involved in their case. As few as 27% respondents are willing to share their medical records with various drug companies