Iceland's national information infrastructure

To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field This article discusses Iceland's national information infrastructure in the year 2000. It focuses on the current information policy and legislation of the country. It looks at this pol...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The International Information & Library Review
Main Author: Olafsson, Sveinn
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Academic Press 2009
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/2336/47214
https://doi.org/10.1006/iilr.2000.0119
Description
Summary:To access publisher full text version of this article. Please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field This article discusses Iceland's national information infrastructure in the year 2000. It focuses on the current information policy and legislation of the country. It looks at this policy as it is presented in government publications from the last 5 years and evaluates its effects, with particular regard to the education, culture and health sectors. It describes the foundation of a nationwide health database in Iceland, which was established by an Act of Parliament taking force on 1 January 1999. The idea for this database came from deCODE, a company that proposes to make use of the homogeneity and the vast genealogical information of the Icelandic nation to develop better drugs for common diseases. The company is a genomics research company, and is currently working with Hoffmann La-Roche. It has gained a 12-year monopoly on building such a database, the formation of which brings up many ethical questions, and also new possibilities for health management.