Social networks for health care: Addressing regulatory gaps with privacy-by-design

Social computing is a relatively new approach to systems design that emphasizes the importance of facilitating collaboration and communication between users. Although social networking is now part of mainstream culture, the use of these applications in the health care space is still in its infancy in Canada. As major vendors are preparing to enter the marketplace, it is important for a wide variety of stakeholders to discern the ramifications of this next wave of technological innovation. This paper discusses social networking applications for health care, and the challenges of dealing with this new type of information management system under current Canadian law. While regulatory authorities have considered the privacy and security implications of social networking in the course of investigating complaints, this paper contains the first explicit analysis of the legal difficulties surrounding the use of social networking for health care applications in Canada. Those risks not covered by the current regulatory framework are assessed from the standpoint of privacy-by-design, as we discuss how software developers can build privacy protection into social networking applications.