• outpatient care,
• the modernisation of the central register of medical equipment, and
• healthy lifestyle development projects,

the evaluators analysed the overall utilisation of healthcare development resources and their spatial distribution, too. The quantitative (statistical/econometric) part of the study deals with (1) the territorial targeting, (2) the direct results (availability and use), and (3) the short-term economic and health-related impacts of interventions. Within this latter, the impacts on

• the restructuring of out and inpatient care,
• the number of days spent on sick leave, and
• the health care of patients with chronic diseases

were primarily under scrutiny.

The evaluation has found that EU resources spent on health care contributed to the policy aim of shifting healthcare provision towards lower levels of progressivity, and that the territorial targeting of interventions was also appropriate: inhabitants of micro regions with worse healthcare indicators (higher mortality rate) received a higher ratio of funding compared both to the average, and to the distribution of regular funding. The main recommendations are related to the regulatory and financing system, the handling of human-resource problems in health care, and to the monitoring of health-care institutional operation.

Summary of the Research Report in English

Although in the last decade several researchers have seen UC as a threat to personal privacy, others analysed the role of the “trade-off” in accepting these solutions. The protection of privacy is important in modern societies because it is a source of power, a utility, the source of human dignity and it can be also a form of control. Identity theft, information inequality, information cross-contamination, and the protection of moral autonomy make these questions highly important. According to the studies conducted so far, there are several factors enhancing end-users’ trust and their willingness to accept the restriction of their privacy and also to give up the partial control of their personal data: people’s self-perception as ill and vulnerable, perceived risks of being alone, as well, as the wish to become mobile, are all crucial components in this “trade-off” of privacy for security.

Case studies conducted among end-users of social-care services, social home patients and individuals do not fully enforce the above hypothesis. In Hungary, institutions are financed by local governments but they use the services of different private companies. The most important result of the case studies is that end-users are less aware of privacy issues than scientists or NGOs would assume. Perceived risks of illness and that of loneliness are the bases of trade-off-s.

Authors(s):

Réka Geambasu, sociologist, Department of Sociology and Social Work, UBB Cluj, HÉTFA Research Institute

Eszter Kelemen, economist, Department of Environmental Management, University of Szent István, Gödöllő,

Boldizsár Megyesi, sociologist, HÉTFA Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Centre for Social Sciences

Zsófia Somogyi, freelancer psychologist

The research was financed by the Bay Zoltán Foundation for Applied Research, Institute for Applied Telecommunication Technologies