Privacy and Security Concerns During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Method Study

Introduction

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-Cov-2) outbreak began in humans in 2019 (WHO,2020). As the COVID-19 influenza pandemic swept over the world, it accelerated the use of digital technologies, mostly for communication and commerce, and the growth of these technologies resulted in technological risks (Li, 2020). Almost every gadget is interdependent and networked, raising concerns about data privacy and protection. Since the outbreak, several incidents of healthcare fraud have been documented, and one of the major concerns across the board is data privacy (Mason & Williams, 2020; Viaene & Dedene, 2004). It is critical to have access to healthcare professionals' perceptions and experiences during pandemics in order to take control of the situation (Liu et al., 2020). Numerous academics and healthcare professionals have stressed the privacy and security concerns that have arisen as a result of the evolution of healthcare technology (Chung & Hershey, 2012; Ermakova et al., 2013; Parks et al., 2011). Healthcare organizations manage a large volume of electronic medical records created by their employees and have access to sensitive and important patient information, making it critical to throw light on healthcare staff (Kaplan, 2016; Rahim et al., 2017). The three most distinguish concept in healthcare setting to protect the healthcare information is privacy, confidentiality, and security (Thomas Rindfleisch, 1997).Privacy protection not merely depends on deidentification and anonymization, but on the transparency of how actually data is utilized (Kaplan, 2016). According to Rahim et al., (2017), Support from top management may lead to educating their employees about the importance of privacy and can be done by creating a personalized and classified privacy policy that outlines the methods for implementing adequate privacy controls to mitigate potential risks. Electronic health records (EHR) and health data networks provides a wealth of public data. Data can be used for variety of objectives, ranging from comparative research to design clinical trial and various monitoring purpose (Kaplan, 2016).