Assessing Information Confidentiality in Telemedicine Platforms Using Public Web Data: A Case Study of Persian Televisit Websites.
Background: The shift from traditional office visits to internet-based care has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing reliance on telemedicine platforms. This growth has led to more health-related electronic data and heightened risks of unauthorized access, making it essential to prio...
| Publicado en: | Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences Vol. 50; no. 12; pp. 843 - 852 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Shiraz University of Medical Sciences
Dec2025
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=189920082&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 189920082 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 02530716 8TQH jtl: Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences issn: 02530716 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2025 vid: 50 iid: 12 pid: 65846 pub: Shiraz University of Medical Sciences place: Shiraz, <Blank> artinfo: ui: 189920082 189920082 189920082 10.30476/ijms.2025.105205.3899 189920082 ppf: 843 ppct: 9 formats: tig: atl: Assessing Information Confidentiality in Telemedicine Platforms Using Public Web Data: A Case Study of Persian Televisit Websites. aug: au: Soleymani, Mohammad Haddad Mohammadpour, Adel affil: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran sug: subj: Telemedicine Privacy and Confidentiality World Wide Web Iran Health Information Whistle Blowing Access to Information Evaluation Human Nonexperimental Studies Iran Data Analysis Software Descriptive Statistics Office Visits COVID-19 Pandemic Electronic Health Records Algorithms Physician-Patient Relations ab: Background: The shift from traditional office visits to internet-based care has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing reliance on telemedicine platforms. This growth has led to more health-related electronic data and heightened risks of unauthorized access, making it essential to prioritize information confidentiality issues. This study aims to reveal the disclosure of confidential information on a Persian televisit website. Methods: In this observational case study, we gathered public health-related electronic data from a Persian televisit website in 2022. SAS software was used to harvest messy data about patients and doctors and create a structured dataset. Meanwhile, Microsoft Excel and RStudio software programs were used for data visualization. A hashing algorithm was applied to encode personal information, preventing the identification of individuals. Results: Our study showed how public web data about 263 patients and 194 doctors, harvested from the target website, can be used to reveal patients' private information. Using such data, we explored the patient-doctor interaction patterns. With access to the patients' identifiable information, we recognized the identity of the clients who received internet-based care services and their possible diseases. Conclusion: This analysis revealed that exposure of patients' confidential information could compromise their identities and underlying medical conditions. This highlights the need for a national framework to ensure the security of health-related electronic data. Health authorities should enforce comprehensive laws, while the owners of televisit websites should implement privacy by design principles into the development of such platforms to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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