Technology acts paper
Adoption of technology has grown widely and most people worldwide use technology in their day to day lives. Technology has resulted to improvements in many aspects of live ranging from communication to the use of technology devices to perform operations. In the event of using technology, there are positive impacts and the negative impacts. The positive impacts are obvious that it has made life easier, while the negative impact includes lack of privacy and emergence of internet fraud. In the event of being absorbed to technology and its impacts, technology acts were implemented in order to protect the rights of technology users. Technology acts, therefore, stipulates the rules, terms and regulations of running day to day life using technology ( Sharma, pg 65. 2000).
1996 Telephone Consumer Protection Act
Technology act enacted the telephone consumer protection act in order to cater for the complaints from consumers. It was as a result of telephone marketing whereby consumers were exploited. This act was meant to protect consumer privacy at all levels of communication, ranging from performing transactions to marketing of products (Guishan, pg 60. 1872). This act addresses concern on telephone companies to first acquire consent from consumers when they are planning to use their information on the consumer’s patterns of making calls on marketing services.
Enacting of this act was a result of consumer complaints that telephone companies have been misusing consumer information, especially personal call records. The federal communications commission upon receiving these complaints placed an order to the telemarketing and telecommunication companies. The order requires that the company should maintain the list of those consumers who request that they should not be called through their telephones. This act also banned the action of sending advertisements that were not required by the consumers, since these adverts were not acceptable in the telemarketing sector. The 1996 Telephone consumer protection act, therefore, protects the rights of consumers who buy products using cell phone communication and negotiations (James et al, pg 120.1999).
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1998 (HIPPA)
This act was enacted to protect the rights of patients whose information is in electronic form. This act provides standards for maintaining electronic information of patients especially health records, in order to protect the privacy of the patients. These rules apply to any health worker especially the doctors responsible for treating the patient. Since the time of patient treatment, the patient has to disclose all their health status to make it easier for the doctor to diagnose the disease. The doctor, therefore, keeps these records, and that is why the health insurance portability and accountability act amended the rules (Sullivian, pg 32. 2004).
These rules include; the patient attendants for example doctors and all health workers in the hospital should inform patients about their rights, and give them a guarantee of enclosing their health information. Patients should be provided with a copy of their health records so that they could correct where necessary. The health records should be kept in a secure place where a password is required upon retrieving them; this will enable the records to be private. This act also allows that patient’s health records and information can be transferred from one doctor to another in the event of researching for the related diseases.
The purpose of enacting the health act arises as a result of hospitals adopting the use of technology in keeping records of their patients. This act therefore protects the rights of patients since some hospitals could disclose health information of their patients by posting them on the internet for fraud reasons that is prohibited.
References
Sullivian, J. (2004). HIPAA: A practical Guide to the privacy and security of health Data. American Bar Association.
James et al. (1999). Communication act: A major Legislative history of the major ammendments,1934-1996. Pike & Fischer
Guishan, S. (1872). Business law. Excel books India
Sharma,V.(2000). Information Technology Law & Practice . Universal law publishing
