ABSTRACT
This chapter explains public health surveillance and briefly outlines the ethical justification of collecting, storing, and using public health data without patient consent. It explores with a general approach for the field and specific recommendations to ensure bio-surveillance, situation awareness, and infectious disease security measures are conducted ethically. Often this process of public health surveillance entails a process without explicit patient consent, or a process that occurs largely in the background of the traditional health care system. The purpose of bio-surveillance, of which syndromic and traditional disease surveillance are components, is to improve early warning of threats and hazards. The bio-surveillance strategy will examine here is the US National Bio-surveillance Strategy for Human Health (NBSHH), as it is well developed, clearly outlined, and publicly accessible. These characteristics of bio-surveillance stress the nascent framework for ethical justification of public health surveillance and these considerations amplify the ethical challenges presented by use of data collected without consent and for a different purpose.
