Privacy Risks, Emotion, and Consumers’ Willingness to Share Personal Health Information

Today’s public discourse on the digitization of healthcare has moved beyond the potential transformational effects of artifacts such as electronic health records to a vision of the future where IT enables the practice and delivery of medicine to be increasingly personalized, in much the same way as products and services are customized to the needs and preferences of consumers in commercial domains. Simultaneously, it has ignited unprecedented concerns regarding the protection of large quantities of personal information that must be captured in electronic health records, which provide the foundational technology platform for interoperability and the realization of promised benefits. As the volume of information which is potentially vulnerable increases exponentially, so does the urgency of finding appropriate policies to protect consumer privacy, while reaping the benefits of digitization.