A Healthy Amount of Privacy: Quantifying Privacy Concerns in Medicine

Abstract

With recent developments in e-health, concerns have been raised regarding the privacy of patients who are monitored with such treatments. I propose a simple method to incorporate these concerns into a standard health impact evaluation, based on Quality Adjusted Life Years and the Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio. This method provides a way to objectively value privacy concerns and balance them with health benefits. Hence, it can guide doctors and policymakers into incorporating privacy considerations and making better choices regarding e-health programs. This method can also be tested on existing economic evaluations to compare outcomes and gauge the extent to which privacy issues in medical treatments should be taken seriously.

Keywords: Patient Privacy, Privacy Loss, Information Privacy, Data Protection, E-Health, QALY, ICER

JEL Classification: K32, I18