Using social networking sites for communicable disease control: innovative contact tracing or breach of confidentiality?
Author(s)
Mandeville, K
Harris, M
Thomas, L
Chow, Y
Seng, C
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Social media applications such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have attained huge popularity, with more than three billion people and organizations predicted to have a social networking account by 2015. Social media offers a rapid avenue of communication with the public and has potential benefits for communicable disease control and surveillance. However, its application in everyday public health practice raises a number of important issues around confidentiality and autonomy. We report here a case from local level health protection where the friend of an individual with meningococcal septicaemia used a social networking site to notify potential contacts.
Date Issued
2013-08-13
Date Acceptance
2013-08-13
Citation
Public Health Ethics, 2013, 7 (1), pp.47-50
ISSN
1754-9981
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Start Page
47
End Page
50
Journal / Book Title
Public Health Ethics
Volume
7
Issue
1
Copyright Statement
© The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
3.0/),
which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
3.0/),
which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Subjects
Social Sciences
Science & Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Ethics
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Medical Ethics
Social Sciences - Other Topics
MEDIA
2201 Applied Ethics
2203 Philosophy
Publication Status
Published