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Many if not most sperm donors in the early years of IVF donated under conditions of anonymity. There is, however, a growing awareness of the ethical cost of withholding identifying parental information from donor children. Today, anonymous donation is illegal in many jurisdictions, and some jurisdictions have gone as far as retrospectively invalidating contracts whereby donors were guaranteed anonymity. This article provides a critical evaluation of the ethics and legality of anonymous donation. We defend Australian and British legislation that has outlawed donor anonymity, and we argue for the establishment of a central registry that provides donor children with the ability to easily and reliably access identifying information about their donor parents., (© 2023. Journal of Bioethical Inquiry Pty Ltd.)

Telemedicine, defined as the practice of delivering healthcare services remotely using information and communications technologies, raises a plethora of ethical considerations. As telemedicine evolves, its ethical dimensions play an increasingly pivotal role in balancing the benefits of advanced technologies, ensuring responsible healthcare practices within telemedicine environments, and safeguarding patient rights. Healthcare providers, patients, policymakers, and technology developers involved in telemedicine encounter numerous ethical challenges that need to be addressed. Key ethical topics include prioritizing the protection of patient rights and privacy, which entails ensuring equitable access to remote healthcare services and maintaining the doctor-patient relationship in virtual settings. Additional areas of focus encompass data security concerns and the quality of healthcare delivery, underscoring the importance of upholding ethical standards in the digital realm. A critical examination of these ethical dimensions highlights the necessity of establishing binding ethical guidelines and legal regulations. These measures could assist stakeholders in formulating effective strategies and methodologies to navigate the complex telemedicine landscape, ensuring adherence to the highest ethical standards and promoting patient welfare. A balanced approach to telemedicine ethics should integrate the benefits of telemedicine with proactive measures to address emerging ethical challenges and should be grounded in a well-prepared and respected ethical framework.

Background: Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. The integration of AI and telehealth applications in healthcare raises ethical concerns such as bias, transparency, data privacy, and accountability for errors. Several studies have assessed this topic, particularly with regard to musculoskeletal disorders, which will be the focus of this manuscript., Objective: We will examine key ethical concepts including informed consent, data protection, confidentiality, physician malpractice, liability, and telemedicine regulations., Methods: Ethical issues pertaining to the topic were explored through a review paper. The primary objective of this scoping review was to map and synthesize the existing literature concerning ethical considerations in telehealth and AI for work-related musculoskeletal disorders., Results: Research demonstrates that medication effectiveness, patient and physician satisfaction, and accessibility costs are higher with telemedicine and AI methods compared to in-person approaches, particularly for work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Therefore, addressing ethical issues, including patient data privacy and security, is crucial in this field. By considering these factors, the adoption of emerging AI and telemedicine applications, especially for work-related musculoskeletal disorders, is likely to increase., Conclusion: AI and telemedicine offer significant advantages, particularly in addressing work-related musculoskeletal disorders. However, ethical and legal issues surrounding their practice require standardized rules to ensure equitable access, quality care, sustainable costs, professional liability, patient privacy, data protection, and confidentiality. Further practical research studies are needed to address these considerations more effectively.

Ethical considerations for the banking of oocytes for nonautologous use are discussed., (Copyright © 2021 American Society for Reproductive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Faced with the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic, and to better understand and contain the disease's spread, health organisations increased the collaboration with other organisations sharing health data with data scientists and researchers. Data analysis assists such organisations in providing information that could help in decision-making processes. For this purpose, both national and regional health authorities provided health data for further processing and analysis. Shared data must comply with existing data protection and privacy regulations. Therefore, a robust de-identification procedure must be used, and a re-identification risk analysis should also be performed. De-identified data embodies state-of-the-art approaches in Data Protection by Design and Default because it requires the protection of direct and indirect identifiers (not just direct). This article highlights the importance of assessing re-identification risk before data disclosure by analysing a data set of individuals infected by Covid-19 that was made available for research purposes. We stress that it is highly important to make this data available for research purposes and that this process should be based on the state of the art methods in Data Protection by Design and by Default. Our main goal is to consider different re-identification risk analysis scenarios since the information on the intruder side is unknown. Our conclusions show that there is a risk of identity disclosure for all of the studied scenarios. For one, in particular, we proceed to an example of a re-identification attack. The outcome of such an attack reveals that it is possible to identify individuals with no much effort., Competing Interests: The authors have read the journal’s policy and have the following competing interests: PF is a paid employee of TekPrivacy. There are no patents, products in development, or marketed products associated with this research to declare. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Objectives: Critical care medicine is a natural environment for machine learning approaches to improve outcomes for critically ill patients as admissions to ICUs generate vast amounts of data. However, technical, legal, ethical, and privacy concerns have so far limited the critical care medicine community from making these data readily available. The Society of Critical Care Medicine and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine have identified ICU patient data sharing as one of the priorities under their Joint Data Science Collaboration. To encourage ICUs worldwide to share their patient data responsibly, we now describe the development and release of Amsterdam University Medical Centers Database (AmsterdamUMCdb), the first freely available critical care database in full compliance with privacy laws from both the United States and Europe, as an example of the feasibility of sharing complex critical care data., Setting: University hospital ICU., Subjects: Data from ICU patients admitted between 2003 and 2016., Interventions: We used a risk-based deidentification strategy to maintain data utility while preserving privacy. In addition, we implemented contractual and governance processes, and a communication strategy. Patient organizations, supporting hospitals, and experts on ethics and privacy audited these processes and the database., Measurements and Main Results: AmsterdamUMCdb contains approximately 1 billion clinical data points from 23,106 admissions of 20,109 patients. The privacy audit concluded that reidentification is not reasonably likely, and AmsterdamUMCdb can therefore be considered as anonymous information, both in the context of the U.S. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the European General Data Protection Regulation. The ethics audit concluded that responsible data sharing imposes minimal burden, whereas the potential benefit is tremendous., Conclusions: Technical, legal, ethical, and privacy challenges related to responsible data sharing can be addressed using a multidisciplinary approach. A risk-based deidentification strategy, that complies with both U.S. and European privacy regulations, should be the preferred approach to releasing ICU patient data. This supports the shared Society of Critical Care Medicine and European Society of Intensive Care Medicine vision to improve critical care outcomes through scientific inquiry of vast and combined ICU datasets., Competing Interests: Dr. Sijbrands’ institution received funding from European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) Health and Amgen. Drs. Kaplan and Bailey received funding from Society of Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Cecconi received funding from Directed Systems, Edwards Lifesciences, and Cheetah Medical. Dr. Churpek’s institution received funding from an EarlySense research grant; he is supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 (GM123193), and he has a patent pending for risk stratification algorithm for hospitalized patients (money from royalties from the University of Chicago). Dr. Clermont received funding from the NIH, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, and NOMA AI. The remaining authors have disclosed that they do not have any potential conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2021 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the Society of Critical Care Medicine and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.)

Spain is the European country where more assisted reproduction techniques (ART) are performed, reaching 9% of newborns. The objective of this article is to introduce the legal framework and to analyze some ethical questions, not without controversy, in relation to the anonymity of gamete donors and the concealment of origin by ART from their children. Spanish legislation establishes the relative anonymity of donors: both gamete recipients and born children have the right to obtain general information about them as long as their identity is not included, but in situations of risk to the life and health of the children allows your bankruptcy. Likewise, an unequivocal right to privacy and confidentiality of submission to the ART is established. The movement aimed at introducing in our country a legislative amendment that ends the anonymity of gamete donors is based on the right of those children to know their biological origin. Along with legal changes, the attitude of parents and professionals must gradually change towards more transparent and responsible communication, based on the experiences of adults conceived by these techniques, and those adopted. Building values such as trust and truth in the family relationships from responsibility requires placing the children, largely forgotten and the most vulnerable part, at the center of the debate., (Copyright © 2021 Asociación Española de Pediatría. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.)

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, high hopes were placed on digital contact tracing. Digital contact tracing apps can now be downloaded in many countries, but as further waves of COVID-19 tear through much of the northern hemisphere, these apps are playing a less important role in interrupting chains of infection than anticipated. We argue that one of the reasons for this is that most countries have opted for decentralised apps, which cannot provide a means of rapidly informing users of likely infections while avoiding too many false positive reports. Centralised apps, in contrast, have the potential to do this. But policy making was influenced by public debates about the right app configuration, which have tended to focus heavily on privacy, and are driven by the assumption that decentralised apps are "privacy preserving by design". We show that both types of apps are in fact vulnerable to privacy breaches, and, drawing on principles from safety engineering and risk analysis, compare the risks of centralised and decentralised systems along two dimensions, namely the probability of possible breaches and their severity. We conclude that a centralised app may in fact minimise overall ethical risk, and contend that we must reassess our approach to digital contact tracing, and should, more generally, be cautious about a myopic focus on privacy when conducting ethical assessments of data technologies.

Teledermatology is now fully incorporated into our clinical practice. However, after reviewing current legislation on the ethical aspects of teledermatology (data confidentiality, quality of care, patient autonomy, and privacy) as well as insurance and professional responsibility, we observed that a specific regulatory framework is still lacking and related legal aspects are still at a preliminary stage of development. Safeguarding confidentiality and patient autonomy and ensuring secure storage and transfer of data are essential aspects of telemedicine. One of the main topics of debate has been the responsibilities of the physicians involved in the process, with the concept of designating a single responsible clinician emerging as a determining factor in the allocation of responsibility in this setting. A specific legal and regulatory framework must be put in place to ensure the safe practice of teledermatology for medical professionals and their patients., (Copyright © 2020 AEDV. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.)

In retrolective research, the information necessary to answer the research question is directly generated from medical records and other clinical-documentary sources. This article analyzes the waiver of informed consent and privacy notice when research is retrolective, from which two lines of argument emerge: one is the physician's duty to protect patient dignity, integrity, right to self-determination and privacy, as well as the confidentiality of the information obtained from him; the other is retrolective research contribution to the control of diseases and society's health improvement. Waiver of informed consent or privacy notice documented in the medical record is important for retrolective research, but it has ethical implications for researchers who do not comply with the rationality and personal responsibility they have before society., (Copyright: © 2020 Permanyer.)

Privacy and confidentiality of personal medical information are cornerstones of ethical clinical care and ethical research. But real-world research has challenged traditional ways of thinking about privacy and confidentiality of information. In today's world of "big data" and learning health care systems, researchers and others are combining multiple sources of information to address complex problems. We present a case study that highlights the ethical concerns that arise when a patient who is employed by an academic medical center learns through a research invitational letter that her private information was accessed at this center without her consent. We discuss the ethical challenges of balancing patient privacy with advancing clinical research and ask, what level of privacy and confidentiality can and should patients expect from their clinician providers, fellow research colleagues, and institutions?, (© 2021 by The Hastings Center. All rights reserved.)

An overview of ethics and clinical ethics is presented in this review. The 4 main ethical principles, that is beneficence, nonmaleficence, autonomy, and justice, are defined and explained. Informed consent, truth-telling, and confidentiality spring from the principle of autonomy, and each of them is discussed. In patient care situations, not infrequently, there are conflicts between ethical principles (especially between beneficence and autonomy). A four-pronged systematic approach to ethical problem-solving and several illustrative cases of conflicts are presented. Comments following the cases highlight the ethical principles involved and clarify the resolution of these conflicts. A model for patient care, with caring as its central element, that integrates ethical aspects (intertwined with professionalism) with clinical and technical expertise desired of a physician is illustrated., (© 2020 The Author(s) Published by S. Karger AG, Basel.)

In September 2015, "the Act on the Protection of Personal Information" was amended. Accordingly, "the Ethical Guidelines for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects" were also amended. "The Act on Anonymized Medical Data That Are Meant to Contribute to Research and Development in the Medical Field," which came into effect in May 2018, aims to collect and utilize medical information of each patient from medical institutions for the purpose of research and development in the medical field. Thus, the rules of personal information that need to be followed are changing considerably in the balance between importance of protection and utilization for medical development. Therefore, health care professionals and researchers are required to fully understand the current situation and the future.

Background: Privacy-related concerns can prevent equitable participation in health research by US Indigenous communities. However, studies focused on these communities' views regarding health data privacy, including systematic reviews, are lacking., Methods: We conducted a systematic literature review analyzing empirical, US-based studies involving American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander (NHPI) perspectives on health data privacy, which we define as the practice of maintaining the security and confidentiality of an individual's personal health records and/or biological samples (including data derived from biological specimens, such as personal genetic information), as well as the secure and approved use of those data., Results: Twenty-one studies involving 3234 AI/AN and NHPI participants were eligible for review. The results of this review suggest that concerns about the privacy of health data are both prevalent and complex in AI/AN and NHPI communities. Many respondents raised concerns about the potential for misuse of their health data, including discrimination or stigma, confidentiality breaches, and undesirable or unknown uses of biological specimens., Conclusions: Participants cited a variety of individual and community-level concerns about the privacy of their health data, and indicated that these deter their willingness to participate in health research. Future investigations should explore in more depth which health data privacy concerns are most salient to specific AI/AN and NHPI communities, and identify the practices that will make the collection and use of health data more trustworthy and transparent for participants., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.)

Research Question: What ethical implications, issues and concerns play a role in conducting follow-up studies of children born after assisted reproductive technologies (ART)?, Design: Literature study and relevant experiences of academic medical centres in Brussels, Belgium, and Maastricht, the Netherlands were used to identify and analyse the most pertinent ethical implications, issues and concerns., Results: According to recommendations from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, follow-up (ideally long term) of children conceived through medically assisted reproduction (MAR) should be an integral part of introducing new ART. With potentially risky new ART on the horizon, these recommendations need to be taken more seriously. Apart from practical barriers, such as funding, challenges for follow-up include securing active involvement of families of children conceived through MAR, starting with parents of young children, and ideally involving consenting adolescents and adults during a large part of their lives, possibly even into the next generation., Conclusions: From an ethical viewpoint, the most pertinent issues include the proportionality of the inevitable burdens and risks for families of children conceived through MAR, and the implications of the principle of respect for autonomy. The proportionality requirement is most critical when it concerns incompetent children, who should not be included in research with more than minimal burdens and risks if there is no reasonable expectation of benefit for themselves. With respect for autonomy, we argue that, when seeking voluntary consent for participating in follow-up studies that meet the condition of proportionality, professionals may encourage members of families of children conceived through MAR to partake in follow-up research., (Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Confidentiality is based on principles of deontology and ethics, which are included in French regulations and supported by the professional orders. It contributes to the respect and dignity of the patient. If this consideration of the human person is old, it has been updated to build the framework imposed by the accreditation of medical biology laboratories. Confidentiality is thus reflected in a charter of ethics, a model of which we propose here. It reflects the commitments of healthcare professionals in the processing of biological samples from patients. Confidentiality is thus applied, in a practical way, at each phase of the laboratory's activity. In the pre-analytical phase, it organizes the reception of the patient and the taking of samples, taking into account the particular case of minors. In the analytical phase, confidentiality imposes limited access to the technical premises and the organization of the flow of personnel from outside the laboratory. Finally, in the post-analytical phase, the reporting of results is regulated, depending on the type of analyses performed and the person to whom the results are to be reported (patient or prescriber). The particular case of spermiology illustrates all these points. Finally, during these phases of sample processing, document management is also a matter of confidentiality and data protection. Confidentiality is essential to the functioning of a health care structure, but it is restrictive in its day-to-day implementation. Nevertheless, it must be combined with an awareness of all staff to address the ethical issue of human dignity.

Purpose: The Norwegian Health Personnel Act (HPA §10a) obliges health professionals to contribute to meeting minor children's need for information about their parents' illness and prognosis. Previous research has shown that many parents withhold information about illness and anticipated death from their children. This study explored main considerations for palliative health-care professionals in these situations, and how they negotiate conflicting considerations of confidentiality and child involvement., Method: This qualitative exploratory study involved semi-structured interviews with 11 palliative health-care professionals. Hermeneutics informed the data analysis., Results: The health professionals' main considerations were sustaining patients' hope and building trust in the professional-patient relationship. Both concerns were grounded in respect for patient autonomy. The health professionals negotiated patient autonomy and child involvement in different ways, defined in the present analysis on a continuum ranging from granting full patient autonomy to going directly against patients' will., Conclusions: The professional-patient relationship is the primary consideration in the health care context, and decision making on the degree of children's involvement happens in a dialogical process between health professionals and patients. Close professional-patient relationships might increase the emotional impacts on health professionals, who consequently might give greater relative weight to patients' will. We propose that procedures for initiating collaboration with professionals in the child's everyday life context help health professionals involving the child without threatening trust., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

In recent years, phylogenetic analysis of HIV sequence data has been used in research studies to investigate transmission patterns between individuals and groups, including analysis of data from HIV prevention clinical trials, in molecular epidemiology, and in public health surveillance programs. Phylogenetic analysis can provide valuable information to inform HIV prevention efforts, but it also has risks, including stigma and marginalization of groups, or potential identification of HIV transmission between individuals. In response to these concerns, an interdisciplinary working group was assembled to address ethical challenges in US-based HIV phylogenetic research. The working group developed recommendations regarding (1) study design; (2) data security, access, and sharing; (3) legal issues; (4) community engagement; and (5) communication and dissemination. The working group also identified areas for future research and scholarship to promote ethical conduct of HIV phylogenetic research., (Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America 2020.)

This article describes the process of designing, approving, and conducting an investigator-initiated protocol to use an eye-tracking device in a health care setting. Participants wore the device, which resembles eyeglasses, in a front-facing manner in an intensive care unit for the study of personnel gaze patterns, producing a visual record of workflow. While the data of interest for our study was not specifically the health information protected by the privacy rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a wide variety of such data was captured by the eye-tracking device, and the prospective consent of all people who might have been incidentally videotaped was not feasible. The protocol therefore required attention to unique ethical considerations-including consent, privacy and confidentiality, HIPAA compliance, institutional liability, and the use of secondary data. The richness of eye-tracker data suggests various beneficial applications in health care occupational research and quality improvement. Therefore, sharing our study's successful design and execution, including proactive researcher-institutional review board communication, can inform and encourage similarly valuable, ethical, and innovative audiovisual research techniques., (© 2020 by The Hastings Center. All rights reserved.)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is among the fastest developing areas of advanced technology in medicine. The most important qualia of AI which makes it different from other advanced technology products is its ability to improve its original program and decision-making algorithms via deep learning abilities. This difference is the reason that AI technology stands out from the ethical issues of other advanced technology artifacts. The ethical issues of AI technology vary from privacy and confidentiality of personal data to ethical status and value of AI entities in a wide spectrum, depending on their capability of deep learning and scope of the domains in which they operate. Developing ethical norms and guidelines for planning, development, production, and usage of AI technology has become an important issue to overcome these problems. In this respect three outstanding documents have been produced:1. The Montréal Declaration for Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence2. Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI3. Asilomar Artificial Intelligence PrinciplesIn this study, these three documents will be analyzed with respect to the ethical principles and values they involve, their perspectives for approaching ethical issues, and their prospects for ethical reasoning when one or more of these values and principles are in conflict. Then, the sufficiency of these guidelines for addressing current or prospective ethical issues emerging from the existence of AI technology in medicine will be evaluated. The discussion will be pursued in terms of the ambiguity of interlocutors and efficiency for working out ethical dilemmas occurring in practical life.

This paper argues that assessing personal responsibility in healthcare settings for the allocation of medical resources would be too privacy-invasive to be morally justifiable. In addition to being an inappropriate and moralizing intrusion into the private lives of patients, it would put patients' sensitive data at risk, making data subjects vulnerable to a variety of privacy-related harms. Even though we allow privacy-invasive investigations to take place in legal trials, the justice and healthcare systems are not analogous. The duty of doctors and healthcare professionals is to help patients as best they can-not to judge them. Patients should not be forced into giving up any more personal information than what is strictly necessary to receive an adequate treatment, and their medical data should only be used for appropriate purposes. Medical ethics codes should reflect these data rights. When a doctor asks personal questions that are irrelevant to diagnose or treat a patient, the appropriate response from the patient is: 'none of your business'., (© 2020 The Authors. Bioethics published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Contemporary bioethics was fledged and is sustained by challenges posed by new technologies. These technologies have affected many lives. Yet health informatics affects more lives than any of them. The challenges include the development and the appropriate uses and users of machine learning software, the balancing of privacy rights against the needs of public health and clinical practice in a time of Big Data analytics, whether and how to use this technology, and the role of ethics and standards in health policy. Historical antecedents in statistics and evidence-based practice foreshadow some of the difficulties now faced, but the scope and scale of these challenges requires that ethics, too, be brought to scale in parallel, especially given the size of contemporary data sets and the processing power of new computers. Fortunately, applied ethics affords a variety of tools to help identify and rank applicable values, support best practices, and contribute to standards. The bioethics community can in partnership with the informatics community arrive at policies that promote the health sciences while reaffirming the many and varied rights that patients expect will be honored., Competing Interests: Disclosure The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work., (Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart.)

Background: While there are numerous mental health apps on the market today, less is known about their safety and quality. This study aims to offer a longitudinal perspective on the nature of high visibility apps for common mental health and physical health conditions., Methods: In July 2019, we selected the 10 top search-returned apps in the Apple App Store and Android Google Play Store using six keyword terms: depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, addiction, high blood pressure and diabetes. Each app was downloaded by two authors and reviewed by a clinician, and the app was coded for features, functionality, claims, app store properties, and other properties., Results: Compared with 1 year prior, there were few statistically significant changes in app privacy policies, evidence and features. However, there was a high rate of turnover with only 34 (57%) of the apps from the Apple's App Store and 28 (47%) from the Google Play Store remaining in the 2019 top 10 search compared with the 2018 search., Discussion: Although there was a high turnover of top search-returned apps between 2018 and 2019, we found that there were few significant changes in features, privacy, medical claims and other properties. This suggests that, although the highly visible and available apps are changing, there were no significant improvements in app quality or safety., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Psychologists are in a position to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic through research, practice, education, and advocacy. However, concerns exist about the ethical implications associated with transitioning from face-to-face to online or virtual formats as necessitated by stay-at-home orders designed to enforce the social distancing required to flatten the curve of new COVID-19 cases. The purpose of this article is to review potential ethical issues and to provide guidance to psychologists for ethical conduct in the midst of the current crisis and its aftermath. In addition to contextualizing relevant ethical considerations according to the principles and standards of the current American Psychological Association's ethics code, vignettes are presented to exemplify the ethical dilemmas psychologists in various roles may face when responding to COVID-19 and to offer suggestions and resources for resolving potential conflicts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa (SA) has established a Tracing Database, collecting both aggregated and individualised mobility and locational data on COVID-19 cases and their contacts. There are compelling public health reasons for this development, since the database has the potential to assist with policy formulation and with contact tracing. While potentially demonstrating the rapid facilitation through technology of an important public service, the Tracing Database does, however, infringe immediately upon constitutional rights to privacy and heightens the implications of ethical choices facing medical professionals. The medical community should be aware of this surveillance innovation and the risks and rewards it raises. To deal with some of these risks, including the potential for temporary rights- infringing measures to become permanent, there are significant safeguards designed into the Tracing Database, including a strict duration requirement and reporting to a designated judge. African states including SA should monitor this form of contact tracing closely, and also encourage knowledge-sharing among cross-sectoral interventions such as the Tracing Database in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study evaluates the conflict between patient confidentiality and partner notification in sero-discordant relationships, and argues the thesis that based on a theoretical formulation of Ubuntu, a health provider is obliged to facilitate friendly relationships in which individuals are true subjects and/or objects of communal friendship. In serodiscordant relationships, the health professional can fulfil this obligation by notifying "others" (particularly a partner with whom an HIV positive patient has a "present" and "actual relationship") of their spouse's HIV seroconversion, since without such relevant information a partner (subject) of an HIV positive patient cannot "appropriately" care for the patient's condition (object). There is a need to move away from the medical traditional emphasis that has for so long put primacy on doctor-patient confidentiality as is the case with the Health Professions Council of South Africa Guidelines (Booklet 12) which favours patient confidentiality over partner notification. Given empirical evidence to support effectiveness of partner notification amongst sero-discordant couples, there is thus, a need to focus emphasis on latter. This shift is necessary for achieving the United Nations' Sustainable Development of Goal of ending HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030. I proposed in this study that African ethics, specifically Ubuntu, will do a better job than current ethical frameworks at ensuring that partner notification receives more emphasis in the care of serodiscordant couples. If this framework is integrated into ethical guidelines and codes, it would significantly enhance the care of serodiscordant couples, as well as further boost global effort at ending HIV/AIDS epidemic by 2030., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Purpose of Review: Along with the benefits of eHealth HIV interventions are challenges to participant privacy and confidentiality inherent in the use of online strategies. This paper reviews current guidelines and recent publications to identify ethical issues and suggested solutions in recruitment, data management, and informed consent., Recent Findings: Across eHealth HIV research, recruitment, data collection, and storage efforts to protect informational risk highlight the tension between the investigators' ability to protect participant confidentiality and the evolving informational risk posed by the online platforms on which they are operating. Adequately addressing these challenges requires updating technical competencies and educating participants on their own responsibilities to guard against privacy violations. Additional protections are required when interventions involve peer or community support, especially with minors. The rapid progression of technology presents challenges in solidifying best practices for future interventions. This article draws on published works describing investigator experiences to contribute to the ongoing development of guidance in this area.

The lack of paediatric medicines, including innovative and advanced ones, is a long-lasting and well-known problem at European and international levels. Despite the existing legal frameworks and incentives, children remain deprived of many kinds of therapy because of challenges faced in appropriately study and tailoring medicinal and other products for them. In this context, the necessity to foster paediatric research addressing unsolved and uncovered issues within a 'translational approach' has appeared. This article, after having clarified the concept of translational research in the perspective of the establishment of a European paediatric research infrastructure (RI), will identify and point out ethical, legal and regulatory issues particularly relevant in a children's rights perspective. It concludes asking for the setting up of an adequate model of governance within a future RI, including adequate and independent ethical oversight and a pluridisciplinary common service dealing with ethical, legal and societal issues relevant for children.

This article focuses on confidentiality and capacity issues affecting patients receiving care in the emergency department. The patient-physician relationship begins with presumed confidentiality. The article also clarifies instances where a physician may be required to break confidentiality for the safety of patients or others. This article then discusses risk management issues relevant to determining a patient's capacity to accept or decline medical care in the emergency department setting. Situations pertaining to refusal of care and discharges against medical advice are examined in detail, and best practices for mitigating risk in informed consent and barriers to consent are reviewed., Competing Interests: Disclosure The author has nothing to disclose., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Given the increasing numbers of ethical and legal issues arising from the COVID-19 epidemic, particularly in respect of patient-doctor confidentiality, doctors must explain to patients how the measures taken to combat the spread of the virus impact on their confidentiality. Patients must be reassured that doctors are ethically bound to continue to respect such confidentiality, but it should be made clear to them that doctors must also comply with the demands of the law. While the Constitution, statutory law and the common law all recognise a person's right to privacy, during extraordinary times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, confidentiality must be breached to a degree to halt the spread of the virus.

From the beginning of medicine, the reproduction of patients' images, initially as drawings, either for didactic purposes or to share experiences, were common in medical practice. Photography greatly facilitated and generalized this practice within health teams. The images of the affected patients need the same consents and guarantees of confidentiality as any other parts of the medical record, so the importance of obtaining informed consent is highlighted. Beyond ethical aspects, professionals have to take into account the legal responsibility involved in carrying out this act., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work., (Sociedad Argentina de Pediatría.)

Objective: This article describes survey results describing ethics/professionalism curricula of US child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) residency programs. This project repeated and expanded upon an earlier survey., Methods: CAP program directors were sent an e-mail with a link to an anonymous electronic survey., Results: Ninety-nine programs responded with 92 completing the majority of the survey. All had instruction during both training years; reading seminars and lectures were the most common teaching formats. The median number of teaching hours was 10. Teaching was considered inadequate by 22%. Confidentiality, child advocacy, and informed consent were the most frequent ethics topics. Communication, patient care during working hours, and conduct at work were the most common professionalism topics. Faculty and resident opinion differed on certain topics. CAPs were preferred educators in 56.5%. External program resources were available to 87% but over 30% used them rarely or never. Faculty evaluations, 360-degree evaluations, and faculty observations were the most common assessment methods; 38% thought trainee assessments need improvement. Programs were classified into more confident and less confident. More confident programs used available ethics resources more frequently (25% vs 8%, p = 0.30) and had more than the median teaching hours (58% vs 35%, p = 0.035)., Conclusions: Compared to the previous study, CAP programs had increased use of interactive methods with more programs reporting having adequate hours. These results are consistent with existing literature confirming the importance of this curriculum but significant issues with adequately educating and evaluating trainees remain.