Electronic Medical Diary (EMD): ethical analysis in a HTA process

Ethical analysis within Health Technology Assessment (HTA) – a comprehensive form of policy research that examines the short- and long- term consequences of the application or use of technologies (in a broad meaning) – aims at analysing the moral questions raised by the technology itself and by the consequences of implementing/not implementing a health technology as well as ethical issues that are inherent in the HTA process. The work intends to assess, within a HTA process, the ethical consequences of implementing the Electronic Medical Diary (EMD) in health care systems. The EMD is a device for supporting the daily registration and collection of clinical events related to a certain patient. The stor-age of these patient-specific clinical data constitutes the patient database (PDB) that may be connected with the many online tools which can improve the flow of information within the hospital information system. Such devices should be able to replace the traditional paper record.