Indigenous Scientist: Digital & Health Science Transformation

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Oct 26:300:30-37. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220939.

Abstract

As an indigenous scientist, I have dedicated all my professional life to protecting people using informatics for public policy to the privacy of users, patients, clients, and citizens as a human right and obligation as part of the United Nations international development goals. I am reflecting on my earliest knowledge of the impact of data and information privacy on my journey as scientist. I was just a number out of many other numbers as a indigenous child. The aim of this paper is to share my own personal experience together with one of my students. Now working with data as a scientific task within the data modeling to measure poverty. As a datum with human value, I was a 1) Female child with young parents, 2) Low socioeconomic status & 3) Identified as an indigenous person within a minor language group. These three data descriptions described me as a person who needed protection of my human dignity and identity as a child, based on all the protocols of social services for providing help. In conclusion, as scientists, we need to remember when using client data in vulnerable contexts and protection of their privacy, due to the potential risk of active discrimination. Thanks to my extensive education in Australia, I became an outlying datum that deviated from the data modeling applied to me. Today, I work for Privacy digital standards to impact real life with respect to human dignity and obtain accurate scientific interpretations of human beings' realities.

Keywords: data; digital interpretation; life & impact; science.

MeSH terms

  • Australia
  • Child
  • Family*
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Physicians*
  • United Nations