Patient knowledge and data privacy in healthcare records system

Abstract

The advancement in usage of information and communication technology has changed the operational activities of most organization in recent times. The grown in usage has contributed to the growth in the data that organizations have access to. In the past decade, the growth of these data has further given rise to research and development into computer storage devices and infrastructure. In addition the big data regime has gained the attention of the academic community as evident in scholarly journals shows. The digitalization of health records and medication notes has made individual health data more readily accessible to a wide range of users including patients, doctors, researchers, statisticians, and data scientists. However, increased accessibility of highly sensitive heath records threatens the privacy and confidentiality of patients. The main concern of database privacy in healthcare records system is mostly without the knowledge and contribution of the records owners being the patients. Most research tackles the problems of big data privacy preservation using different frame works and other solutions without involving the record owners. This paper seek the knowledge of some patients with respect to their data recorded in the healthcare system and how their privacy is secured. The paper further researched on identifying the relationship between client knowledge on data privacy and big data protection in healthcare records system. We used field survey to gather and analyze data by adopting a quantitative method. Therefor the respondent in this study were patient and record officers from multiple hospital that includes both private and public institutions. Both Pearson correlation and linear regression analysis is conducted to test the hypothesis stipulated for the purpose of this study. The study makes thrives in areas of combining computer technology and social forces to mitigate the risk propensity associated with healthcare records in healthcare institutions. It provides need direction for data privacy research but shifting the paradigm to integrate social forces and factors as an enabler of healthcare record protection. Sometime that has not been covered extensively in current studies that examine big data, data privacy and healthcare records.