Privacy and confidentiality are two important principles in medical research that relate to protecting personal information and data. In addition, the importance of privacy and confidentiality has been emphasized as a foundation of research ethics by the Helsinki Declaration.
Privacy refers to the right of individuals to control who has access to their personal information and how that information is used. In medical research, researchers should respect the privacy of research participants by obtaining their informed consent before collecting any personal information or data. Informed consent involves providing participants information about the research and obtaining their agreement to participate.
Confidentiality means that personal information and data should be kept private and secure. In other words, confidentiality is any legal and moral effort to ensure that research is carried out with the utmost respect for participants’ privacy and the confidentiality of their personal information.
privacy and confidentiality in medical research
In medical research, researchers should ensure that the personal information and data of research participants are protected and not shared with unauthorized individuals. This may involve de-identifying data, using secure storage and transmission methods, and implementing strict access controls.
The researchers must keep the confidentiality of participants’ personal information, records, and other sensitive data.
Conducting human research entails safeguarding participants’ confidentiality to the maximum extent possible and explaining possible harm or risk, such as loss of confidentiality. Coding participants by numbers instead of using their real names and other identifying data, as well as minimizing access to the participant’ records, are among the efforts to maintain confidentiality.
In addition, confidentiality is crucial to the researcher-participants relationship. In the absence of confidentiality, the participant may be unwilling to provide the researcher with the necessary information, leading to invalid results.
Maintaining anonymity and confidentiality in qualitative research is problematic. In qualitative research, non-numerical data (e.g., text, video, or audio) is gathered and analyzed to understand concepts, ideas, or experiences deeply.
Additionally, qualitative research deals with fewer participants while gathering much in-depth personal information. Therefore, protecting participants’ confidentiality while addressing detailed descriptions of their experiences and beliefs is a significant challenge.