Personal Health Information, Privacy and Surveillance: Do We Need a Critical Voice?

This paper argues that many expanding secondary uses of personal health information are moving beyond legitimate monitoring processes, to become surveillance practices used for purposes of controlling individuals and populations. The paper focuses on the academic discipline of health informatics as a key claim-making site for influencing understandings about uses of personal health information. Using a Foucauldian influenced analysis, it discusses the way discourses shape our attitude to expanding uses of personal health information. It argues that aspirational goals of the discipline discourage critical analyses, creating the potential for the health informatics community to support expanding use of personal information for activities that may result in discrimination, disadvantage.