The report "Medical profiling and online medicine: the ethics of 'personalised healthcare' in a consumer age" by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics has been lauched today in an event at the Law Society, London.
The report explores the application of five relevant ethical values (confidentiality, autonomy, harm reduction, equity and efficiency, and social solidarity) to selected case studies on personal genetic profiling, direct-to-consumer body imaging, telemedicine and three additional uses/services available through the internet: health information, health records, and purchase of medicines.
Prof. Christopher Hood, Gladstone Professor of Government at the Univeristy of Oxford, has summarized the key messages during the presentation. These technologies have the potential for radically transforming medical care, but most of them are still in development, making it difficult to predict how much use will be made of them in the future. They offer a mix of potential benefits and harms and they affect key ethical values. Regular scrutiny is advocated in the report, along with an appeal for caution about exagerated claims about them.
Full details are available here.
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