Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment (Dec 2017)

Physical factors that influence patients’ privacy perception toward a psychiatric behavioral monitoring system: a qualitative study

  • Zakaria N,
  • Ramli R

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 14
pp. 117 – 128

Abstract

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Nasriah Zakaria,1,2 Rusyaizila Ramli3 1Research Chair of Health Informatics and Promotion, 2Medical Informatics and E-learning Unit, Medical Education Department, College of Medicine, King Saud University, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; 3Advanced Military Maintenance Repair and Overhaul Center (AMMROC), Abu Dhabi, UAE Background: Psychiatric patients have privacy concerns when it comes to technology intervention in the hospital setting. In this paper, we present scenarios for psychiatric behavioral monitoring systems to be placed in psychiatric wards to understand patients’ perception regarding privacy. Psychiatric behavioral monitoring refers to systems that are deemed useful in measuring clinical outcomes, but little research has been done on how these systems will impact patients’ privacy. Methods: We conducted a case study in one teaching hospital in Malaysia. We investigated the physical factors that influence patients’ perceived privacy with respect to a psychiatric monitoring system. The eight physical factors identified from the information system development privacy model, a comprehensive model for designing a privacy-sensitive information system, were adapted in this research. Scenario-based interviews were conducted with 25 patients in a psychiatric ward for 3 months. Results: Psychiatric patients were able to share how physical factors influence their perception of privacy. Results show how patients responded to each of these dimensions in the context of a psychiatric behavioral monitoring system. Conclusion: Some subfactors under physical privacy are modified to reflect the data obtained in the interviews. We were able to capture the different physical factors that influence patient privacy. Keywords: information system development (ISD), physical factor, privacy, psychiatric monitoring system

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