THE MEDICAL STANDARD OF CARE IN CYBERMEDICINE: E-COMMUNICATION BETWEEN DOCTOR AND PATIENT

10^th World Congress on HEALTHCARE & TECHNOLOGIES

July 17-18, 2017 | Lisbon, Portugal

Vera Lucia Raposo

Macau University, China

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Health Med Informat

Abstract :

Cybermedicine is becoming increasingly frequent around the world due to its many benefits. However, health care players are hardly aware that cybermedicine is likely to promote specific medical faults, eventually avoidable in conventional medicine. In this regard there are two dimensions that demand consideration: hazards derived from technical errors promoted by technology, on the one hand; the excessive trust the human operator has on technology, on the other hand. Both of them can easily fuel medical liability lawsuits. Therefore, the existing standard of care must be adapted to the specificities of cybermedicine. For instance, to communicate at distance with a patient - by telephone, e-mail or a website � requires proper communication rules, namely regarding security and privacy in communication, but also concerning the proper behaviour to be adopted by the health care professional. This concern is particularly relevant when the doctor never had before a personal contact with the patient, because the risk of misrepresentation is very high. In addition, within cybermedicine the doctor is required to possess particular technological skills in order to use sophisticated methods to communicate with distant patients and other health care staff, to operate complex at distance technological devices and to maintain updated the patient�s health record, usually electronic health records which may be connected with different health care facilities. This presentation intends to analyse the particular rules of the cyber-standard of care and to help physicians to avoid liability law suits.