E-mail Directory of Physicians in Africa (2)
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Dear colleagues,
Whereas the E-mail "Directory of Physicians in Africa" initiative is
appreciated, I fear that several points need to be stressed, and le-
gally guaranteed, BEFORE individuals' data is solicited. I think
other AFRO-NETS recipients would have other points, but the most ob-
vious and the most urgent that spring to my mind are:
a) How will the information you receive be verified and authenti-
cated? The concerns RANGE FROM the validity of the information re-
ceived TO the authentication that the provider is truly the individ-
ual concerned?
b) What are the overall uses of the list? Will it extend to commer-
cial and promotional uses, formally or informally? If so, what are
the legal and ethical rules that will be in force to protect the con-
tent of the list, and particularly the individuals concerned?
There is a great deal of technical and governance work that is in
progress in the issues/fields of concern cited above. But, much is
still not yet reliably usable.
In brief, without wanting to appear to pour cold water on this ini-
tiative, it would be prudent to tread slowly and carefully on the
founding steps to follow, and clear the above (and I am sure other)
issues BEFORE soliciting data from and about individual physicians in
Africa.
Salah H. Mandil, Ph.D.
Health Informatics & Telematics
WHO Geneva
mailto:mandils@who.ch
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