Objective: A multi-phase, sequential mixed methods study aimed to determine acceptable age-appropriate physical intimate behaviors shared between Filipino parents and children that are related to hygiene, affection and privacy. Methods: Following an exploratory qualitative phase (Phase 1) and an instrumentation phase (Phase 2), the quantitative survey phase (Phase 3) utilized the resultant Filipino Family Behavior Questionnaire (FFBQ). A total of 145 participants from Cabuyao, Laguna and selected urban communities in Metro Manila were comprised of 72 parents and 73 adult children. Results: Parents and adult children view the affection-related behaviors of hugging (magyakapan/ magyapusan) and kissing on the cheeks (humalik sa pisngi) as most acceptable among the list of parent-child intimate behaviors in the FFBQ, and is allowed without any age limit set for children (up to age 18 years). The lowest accepted age-appropriate intimate behaviors were hygiene related, specifically on washing genitalia (median 5 years, range 0,18), co-bathing (3 years, range 0,18), and holding/kissing genitals (0, range 0,17). Generally, adult children accept higher age-limits compared to parent participants. Both groups placed higher age-acceptable limits on mothers compared to fathers. When comparing parent-child pairs, same-gender pairs have significantly higher age-acceptable limits compared to mixed gender pairs. Ranked in order of highest to lowest age-acceptable limits, the most accepted gender pair in performing intimate behavior is mother-daughter; father-son; mother-son; and father-daughter. Perceptions of acceptable age limits were comparable between parents with adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) compared to those without ACE, except for hugging between mother-daughter (17.21 vs 18 years, p=0.04) and father-daughter (17.21 vs 14.22 years, p<0.01) as well as co-dressing of mother-son (3.76 vs 2.19 years, p=0.02).For children, differences in perception were noted only for hugging between mother and son (17.95 vs 15.37 years, p<0.01), and kissing on lips between father and son (5.33 vs 8.94 years, p=0.03). Respondents in Phase 4 believe that mothers are seen as nurturing and caring towards children, thus rendering acceptance of higher age limits for engaging in intimate behavior, specifically for hygiene and privacy. Similar-gender pairs tend to be more at ease with each other, hence the persistence of intimate behavior even at older ages. Conclusion This study was able to identify Filipino intimate behaviors of parents and children including their age-appropriateness. Parents and adult children had similar valuations for healthy boundaries in intimate behavior, as evidenced by the older perceived mean ages for hugging, kissing on the cheek (affection) and co-sleeping (privacy), as well as younger perceived mean ages for hygiene-related intimate behavior such as holding/kissing genitalia, washing genitalia and co-bathing. Parent-child intimate behavior is more acceptable for same-gender pairs, and is least appropriate for older ages in father-daughter pairs. Moreover, adult children appear to be more permissible in exhibiting lower cutoffs for age limits of acceptability compared to parents.
Hygiene ; Affection ; Privacy

OBJECTIVE: If medical information is integrated for management purposes, the efficiency of the system may increase. In addition, diagnostic abilities of physicians may be improved through the increased speed and accuracy of information processing. Medical databases must ensure high performance in terms of speed and reliability. In addition, access to medical information must be restricted to persons with proper authorization to ensure the privacy of patients. METHODS: Thus, the security of medical database systems with multiversion data requires both the existing management system and security policies. RESULTS: This study simulates the performance of a dynamic multiversion data management system in terms of security levels and update operations. CONCLUSION: The results show that a dynamic multiversion data management system increases disk availability more than a double version system. In addition, if the number of security levels is small, throughput will be improved because the security overhead will be low. However, frequent update operations will decrease throughput whenever versions are created at each interval.
Automatic Data Processing ; Dietary Sucrose ; Humans ; Privacy

PURPOSE: This study was conducted in the base hospital of Tangalle, Sri Lanka, in order to improve a new emergency operating system. METHODS: Emergency staff and patients were surveyed based on the five point Likert scale. Doctors and nurses were asked to rate their level of satisfaction regarding their relationship with patients. Patients were asked to rate their level of satisfaction with doctors, facilities, and the environment in the hospital. RESULTS: Doctors were overall satisfied with their job, scoring an average of 3.7. They were displeased with limitation of autonomous decision making on medical treatment, which they gave a score of 2.80. Nurses were generally satisfied with emergency services, with a score of 4.53. Nurses feel discomfort in non-specialized training (3.02). They also sense a lack of opportunities in their hospital (3.12). Patients' findings indicate that most patients were satisfied (4.2) and were displeased with wait time (3.429) and the attention that was given to each patient (3.92). When asked if they would recommend their physician to others and were willing to come back to their physician, outcomes were generally positive, receiving scores of 4.1, respectively. CONCLUSION: Findings showed that in order to create a well-structured system in the emergency centers around the Tangalle area, it is crucial to meet the needs of both patients and the emergency staff. Patients must have a sense of rapid treatment as well as privacy. Training should be provided to the staff so that they are better informed in quality care and up to date on recent studies.
Decision Making ; Emergencies* ; Humans ; Privacy ; Sri Lanka*

CONTEXT: Evolution of the scope and context of privacy and confidentiality brought about by use of information and communications technology in healthcare.

OBJECTIVE: To review the legal, professional and ethical landscape of health information privacy in the Philippines.

METHODOLOGY: Systematic review of literature and policy frameworks.

RESULTS: Philippine laws jurisprudence recognize and protect privacy of health information as a general rule; impose upon individual practitioners and institutions the obligation to uphold such right; and may apply in both the traditional and eHealth milieu. There is no existing policy framework that addresses issues relating to [a] access to health information by non-health professionals, [b] use of health information for non-health purposes, and [c] rules relating to collection, storage and utilization of electronically-derived or -stored information. A privacy culture, on either the provider's or client's side, is also lacking in the country.

CONCLUSION: Technological developments have outpaced policy and practice. There is a need to unify the patchwork of regulations governing the privacy of health information; advocate for a privacy culture among professionals and patients alike; fortify the evidence base on patient and provider perceptions of privacy; and develop and improve standards and systems to promote health information privacy at the individual and institutional levels. 

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the patient's perception of the nurse's behavior in protecting patient privacy and to make suggestions for medical facilities to increase protection of patient privacy. METHOD: The research was a survey study. The data on protection of privacy in primary nursing, for physical privacy, of patient information and in private conversations were collected in October 2005 from 187 patients in a university hospital. Frequencies, means, t-test, ANOVA, and chi-square-test were used to analyze the data. The SPSS 13.0 for Windows program was used. RESULTS: The mean score for patients' perception of nurse protection of their privacy was 3.33. There were significant differences in perception of protecting patients' privacy according to gender for private conversation, according to level of education for all but physical nursing and for number of admissions for total score and for primary nursing. CONCLUSION: The results of this study suggest the following: a) Institutional polices and nursing guideline should be clearly stated as to the nurses' duty to protect patient privacy. b) Medical facilities should be arranged in a way that allows for the protection of patients' medical information, and should focus on patient privacy. c) It is necessary of nurses to receive periodic in-service education on protecting patient privacy.
Education ; Humans ; Nursing ; Primary Nursing ; Privacy*

Since the effectuation of a new bioethical law, the number of registered genetic testing laboratories in Korea has reached about one hundred and seventy, as of June 2006. For the purpose of supervision and quality control of these laboratories the Korean Institute of Genetic Testing and Evaluation (KIGTE) was founded in October 2005 with the support of the Korean Government. KIGTE will perform its task by establishing a proficiency testing program and on-site inspection program in the near future. At this moment, however, the ambiguous definition of genetic testing, hasty entry of research tests into clinical practice, unpreparedness of some non-medical commercial laboratories for systematic quality assurance programs, and the risk of violating privacy related to genetic testing are major issues to be solved.
Genetic Testing* ; Jurisprudence ; Korea* ; Organization and Administration ; Privacy ; Quality Control

As genetic information is not changeable lifelong and might be used as disease predictors in a family, it requires special protection. Private genetic information is kind of individually identifiable health information, also known as 'protected health information (PHI)', which consists of individual identifier and individuals' health information. The removal of individual identifier from PHI is called 'deidentification'. For every institute that deals with PHI, the deidentification process and designation of a privacy official responsible for the implementation of privacy procedures could be urgent and practical strategies for protecting the privacy in genetic testing. However, for better patient care, deidentification would not be recommended when PHI flows among medical staffs.
Genetic Testing* ; Humans ; Medical Staff ; Patient Care ; Privacy*

OBJECTIVE: As the rapid progress of aged society, there must be solutions of preparation against unpredicted accidents for aged solitary people. The most important thing that we must consider is the unconstraint of daily life. So, we are to develop a system and algorithm which meet our objectives. METHODS: We have monitored the degree of activity of the aged solitary person. The CCD camera was used not to disturb the daily activity and we evaluated the degree of activity using image processing on personal computer. The activity monitoring during night was assumed by sleeping on the bed, so the major method was breath monitoring during sleeping. On the other hand, daily activity was monitored by wide viewing camera in the living room. To prevent the privacy trouble, the acquired image was converted to binary form and the degree of breath and moving factor was estimated. RESULTS: In this paper we propose a new processing algorithm to accurately measure breathing characteristics in sleep apnea sufferers. We improved the conventional center-of-mass method and further applied the projection-profile method. As a result, we have improved breath measurement accuracy. In a comparison with conventional polysomnography, our method was 92% effective in detecting apnea cases. CONCLUSION: As a result of this study, we can monitor sleep apnea more simply and with no sleep interference. In measuring the activity of daily life, these improved algorithms were applied. So, we established a monitoring method of no-constrained, quantitative measurement for the aged solitary people during the whole day.
Apnea ; Hand ; Humans ; Microcomputers ; Polysomnography ; Privacy ; Respiration ; Sleep Apnea Syndromes*

PURPOSE: This study aims to determine obstetric and gynecologic (OBGY) nurses' perception and performance propecting patients' privacy, and to contribute to develop educational program and improve the quality of nursing care. METHODS: 206 OBGY nurses in 6 hospitals using an electronic medical record or an order communicating system were chosen by convenience sampling and agreed to participate in the study. The questionnaire, explored 4 domains of privacy: direct nursing, linked business, patient information management, communication with relatives. RESULTS: Perception and performance of protecting patient privacy averaged 4.29 (of 5) and 3.55 (of 5), respectively. Most nurses (94.2%) recognized the importance of protecting patient privacy, 80.1% received patient privacy education. There was a distinct difference between the perception and performance of protecting patient privacy of nurses. Performance of protecting patient privacy had a positive correlation with perception. CONCLUSION: Proper performance of protecting privacy protection requires improving perception of each nurse on the patient privacy, and various efforts should be made to minimize the affect from external factors such as hospital environment. It is needed to educate nurses for patient privacy. It is also needed for medical organizations to improve their policies and facilities to ease the performance for privacy protection.
Commerce ; Electronic Health Records ; Humans ; Information Management ; Privacy ; Surveys and Questionnaires

The government had a plan to set up a new medical information law last October, which allows hospitals to share medical records of patients with given consent. The aim of this act is to manage and protect medical information effectively. However, civic groups and medical organizations strongly claim that there is a high possibility of leakage of individuals' private medical information that can raise conflicts of interest under the medical information act. Computerization of personal medical information is essential for the business efficiency, however, it may cause a serious damage to the society as well as to individuals should the information be used without the individuals' consent. In the age of knowledge and information, the improved medical service and its effectiveness via informatization is an unavoidable choice, however, it is also hoped that the issues of human rights be thoroughly considered in the process of medical informatization to prevent a potential aftermath to the people and the society.
Commerce ; Hope ; Human Rights ; Humans ; Jurisprudence ; Medical Records ; Privacy*