WEB-SITE ETHICS: Group Establishes Preliminary Guidelines

      To "increase public trust in health Web sites," a group of health industry representatives, Internet executives and academics participated in the "eHealth Ethics Summit" in Washington, D.C. this week to outline broad recommendations for establishing industry ethics standards, the Wall Street Journal reports. Sponsored by the Internet Healthcare Coalition, the two-day meeting focused on topics such as patient privacy protection and informed consent. While noting the need to collect user information for academic reasons, the recommendations call for health sites to "explain prominently and in plain language how personal data are collected" and how such information will be used. In addition, the proposed rules advocate the creation of a system to provide users access to the information as well as the ability to correct erroneous information collected over the Web. A formal publication of the recommendations will be made available for public comment later this month; the final version is anticipated to be adopted this spring (2/3).