
86 | CHAPTER 5 Ethical Applications of Informatics
information exchange to promote population health. Alpert (2008) asks, “Is it
wise to put genomic sequence data into electronic medical records that are poorly
protected, that cannot adhere well to Fair Information Practice Principles for pri-
vacy, and that can potentially be seen by tens of thousands of people/entities,
when it is clear that we do not understand the functionally of the genome and
likely will not for several years?” (p. 382). Further, how does one really obtain in-
formed consent for such data collection, when how the data will ultimately be
used is not known, but clearly it will be ...