Oral Presentations Abstracts: MANAGEMENT OF MEDICAL DATA IN EMERGING THREATS

Abstract

View of Volume 66, Special Issue, September 2021

Emerging viral or bacterial threats pose significant medical and ethical issues, caused not only by the management of the disease, but also by the uncontrolled dissemination of information, both true and fake. Even the most correct and impartially presented piece of information can be understood by the patients or by the public at large in ways that are opposite to those intended by the communicators. This, associated with the increased prevalence of fake news, may cause havoc and decrease the efficacy of the needed preventive measures that have to be taken to tackle the actual medical problem.

Within the context of the coronavirus outbreak, this has been coined as “infodemic”, increasing the difficulty of finding an optimal solution to the actual problem. Medical data about an emerging medical threat is disseminated through mass – and social media, especially by public authorities and physicians. The latter have specific duties, appertaining to their professional codes of morals, toward minimizing the harms generated by diseases, both at a personal and at a populational level. In infodemics, the management of the information they present to the public is extremely important, as each wording can be improperly interpreted and cause opposite effects.

In this paper, we will discuss whether and which healthcare professionals should be involved in disseminating information about emerging healthcare threats, and which moral duties should prevail in these instances.