Personal data that owned by a certain individual is meant to stay private until that person decide to do otherwise. It’s a personal matter as the word describe itself and it’s up to that individual to specify which party those data of his could be revealed and shared with. But it looks like that concept is not followed in the case of Jimmy Small were it seems that a specific people around him were somehow able to know his medical condition without being aware of it. For this data to be fall in the hand of others, it was able to benefit and harm, at the same time, specific parties that involved in Jimmy's life.
<Pic Source: Privacy Awareness Book>
The Small’s family well known for the fact that it’s men more likely to die before women in the family. So, Jimmy, who was registered with one of the doctors in Micham Medical Center (MMC), decide to go and check his health condition regarding his future life. Since medical research centers are able to access electronic patient record (EPR) that been put in Medlink, they were able to do research in that region about families life expectancy and causes of death including the Small’s family. Therefore, the doctor shared the result that been discovered facts about his family current and future conditions were the men are more likely to die earlier than women and Jimmy found out that his health condition could worsen after five years gradually. Jimmy friend, Sharon Webb who works as an administrator at MMC, was aware of his condition as well as his insurance company who end up tripling his insurance. As a conclusion, we could say that administrators, who are responsible for entering data of patients into EPR, had the ability to read patients information while transferring it and there was no way in the system to block them from reading the data. Also since there was a specific group of the organization had access to the Medlink, Jimmy insurance company who has access to EPR, was able to find out about his condition just by looking at his data in Medlink.
After hearing the news from the doctor, Jimmy seems to be lost in his thought since he knows that he might not be able to live long and enjoy his regular life. Also on top of that, his friend that always teased him for the fact that men don’t live long, seems to pity him right now. With his insurance being tripled and the fact that he might die soon, there is a big possibility that his life will become meaningless from that day and onward. But this news won’t be directed to him only but all Small's men who're their life might be in danger as well. So all men in that family would be known for the fact of them dying earlier than expected. It won’t affect them mentally but socially as well, they might be able to marry in the future since the other gender would know that there is a possibility of them not living long enough to build a stable family together as parents. Away from emotional effects, there is as well a financial one regarding their job journey. No one would want to hire and train an employee that might die sooner. Those men might end up giving up their dreams they had in minds to enjoy every minute away from the worries of building a future for himself or his future family he might create if he was able to do so.
The fact that some family medical record were able to fall in the hand other organizations and trouble its owner with worries and insurance company, means that more concerns would arise for other families as well since their medical condition could be exposed to that company. That problem of how the personal medical data being handled for patients could affect all local population in that area and cause problems that should be taken care of regarding the privacy issue. While those patients being disturbed regarding their medical and financial condition, other organization taking benefits regarding that information. First, the local population health would be able to predict their lifespan and what kind of health problems that could occur in that particular region in order to find a solution for it. As well as raising awareness to those people so that they would so something to regulate their daily life habit in a way to benefit them in the coming future. In the other hand, the insurance company was able as well to take benefit from those reports to increase other people plan if necessary depending on their health condition.
Even though it looks like one person get affected by this kind of incident that happened, but we could say how big of an impact it could cause in the future for another local citizen in the area. It’s also was able to benefit and harm at the same time both way, individuals and companies. So we could say that insurance companies should not be allowed to look at medical personal data of any individual since it’s not a necessity. Also, administrators in the hospital itself, they only should know the names to transfer the data without allowing them to view the file of the patients entirely. Therefore, their computer system should be developed in a way that could consider how much of a data an employee would be allowed to access. As well as, specifying which parties are allowed to use those personal data according to their purposes.