Ethics and Data

Data ethics centers on how institutions interact with data that is sensitive and whether data is being used in service or in harm to individuals, groups or other institutions. The operations, decision making and implications of how data is generated, collected, stored, accessed and analyzed are all fundamental aspects of data ethics. What this really means isn’t just about how hardware or software interacts with data but also how people, such as employees or users, interact with it as well.

To further illustrate and reinforce how broad data ethics really is (and why it matters so much), let’s consider the case of healthcare.

You are a director of a hospital. Besides managing the day-to-day operations and ensuring that the hospital is well-resourced and well-staffed, you have to consider how best to utilize the sensitive data of the hospital’s patients.

But why does that matter? How could having faulty data practices undermine your hospital?

Data Generation:

A hospital that does not obtain medically relevant information on its patients will be unable to provide life-saving care. For example, how could doctors diagnose illnesses and prescribe treatments if they don’t first have all the necessary insights into the patients’ health history? A doctor would violate their Hippocratic Oath if they knowingly prescribed treatments that later went on to cause harm, such as injury or death, to their patients. The only way to avoid these kinds of outcomes would be for hospitals to have a way of obtaining medically relevant information about their patients. So, how hospitals generate and source their data is of utmost importance to their operations.

Data Access:

Clearly, it is not enough that hospitals simply obtain vital information on their patients. Hospitals need to also be aware of best practices on how to properly secure and maintain their stores of sensitive data. For example, hospitals are primary targets of hacking. One way that hackers could target hospitals would be that they could illegitimately access medical data. If you don’t pay a hefty ransom, I will release (or delete or tamper with) all of this sensitive data about your patients, as the logic goes. One of the reasons why this is such a problem is that medical data is highly personal and can easily be used to identify someone. Worse still, it is possible to use medical data against someone as a way to blackmail them.

Another way that hackers could target hospitals would be that they could gain unauthorized control of machinery and other medically-urgent systems. Putting aside back-up power generation, a hospital without electricity simply would not be able to conduct necessary tests, administer treatments or ensure the proper monitoring of patient outcomes. This is because modern hospitals require machinery and systems that run on electricity in order to perform its functions efficiently and effectively. Without this, all operations would have to be done by hand and in low-light conditions. This simply wouldn’t be viable for the hospital. So, it matters greatly who has access to data (and what systems interact with such data) and what are the safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized access which can sabotage hospital operations.

Data Analysis:

Let’s assume that your hospital has impeccable security measures and a robust way of generating and collecting medically useful information. What comes next? Key decisions regarding staffing, resource allocation, inventory and the logistics of getting patients in and out of hospitals are all based on how data is analyzed. For-profit hospitals will come to very different conclusions than their counterparts regarding staffing choices and whether or not certain types of patients can be given care. The reason why data analysis matters so much for the operations of a hospital is because a hospital can only optimize if it clearly knows how it can reduce areas of inefficiency. For example, knowing patient flow rates would help a hospital in ascertaining how many beds it needs and how much staff it will need to attend to each patient. This analysis could not be done without first having relevant information which can be scrutinized.

With all of these points considered, it should be abundantly clear just how pervasive and intrinsic concerns of data ethics are to the proper functioning of socially-necessary services and systems. As the saying goes: garbage in, garbage out. In our case, when data is used inappropriately there will be real consequences to the people who are affected by how that data is used. Patients could die. Health crises could be made much worse because hospitals aren’t adequately designed with enough breathing room to address possible disasters.

Our usage of data ultimately determines every decision that we make. That is why data ethics matters. As data consultants, we need to be advocates and educators on data ethics. We need to work with our teammates and stakeholders to inform and support their adoption of ethical data practices. We all benefit when data is not only clean and ready but also when it is ethically cared for.

Author:
Lyon Abido
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