Studies from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in the Area of Personalized Medicine Described (Visualizing an Ethics Framework: A Method to Create Interactive Knowledge Visualizations From Health Policy Documents)

2020 JAN 29 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Fresh data on Drugs and Therapies - Personalized Medicine are presented in a new report. According to news reporting originating from Zurich, Switzerland, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Data have become an essential factor in driving health research and are key to the development of personalized and precision medicine. Primary and secondary use of personal data holds significant potential for research; however, it also introduces a new set of challenges around consent processes, privacy, and data sharing.”

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, “Research institutions have issued ethical guidelines to address challenges and ensure responsible data processing and data sharing. However, ethical guidelines directed at researchers and medical professionals are often complex; require readers who are familiar with specific terminology; and can be hard to understand for people without sufficient background knowledge in legislation, research, and data processing practices. This study aimed to visually represent an ethics framework to make its content more accessible to its stakeholders. More generally, we wanted to explore the potential of visualizing policy documents to combat and prevent research misconduct by improving the capacity of actors in health research to handle data responsibly. We used a mixed methods approach based on knowledge visualization with 3 sequential steps: qualitative content analysis (open and axial coding, among others); visualizing the knowledge structure, which resulted from the previous step; and adding interactive functionality to access information using rapid prototyping. Through our iterative methodology, we developed a tool that allows users to explore an ethics framework for data sharing through an interactive visualization. Our results represent an approach that can make policy documents easier to understand and, therefore, more applicable in practice. Meaningful communication and understanding each other remain a challenge in various areas of health care and medicine.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “We contribute to advancing communication practices through the introduction of knowledge visualization to bioethics to offer a novel way to tackle this relevant issue.”

For more information on this research see: Visualizing an Ethics Framework: A Method to Create Interactive Knowledge Visualizations From Health Policy Documents. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2020;22(1):e16249. Journal of Medical Internet Research can be contacted at: Journal of Medical Internet Research, Toronto General Hospital, R Fraser Elliott Bldg, 4TH FL, R 4S435, 190 Elizabeth St, Toronto, on M5G 2C4, Canada.

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting J. Sleigh, Health Ethics and Policy Lab, Dept. of Health Sciences and Technology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. Additional authors for this research include M. Schneider, J. Amann and E. Vayena.

Publisher contact information for the Journal of Medical Internet Research is: Journal of Medical Internet Research, Toronto General Hospital, R Fraser Elliott Bldg, 4TH FL, R 4S435, 190 Elizabeth St, Toronto, on M5G 2C4, Canada.

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