Ethical and-legal-aspects-of-health-care

2. Key ethical issues in the practice of Telemedicine
generally includes;
 Confidentiality
 Avoiding harm.
 Defining Professional Relationship.
 Obtaining informed consent.
 Establishing fees and financial arrangements.
 Providing services to patients served by other
professionals.
 Maintaining records and data.

3.  Basic right of an individual to not have personal
information disclosed to others without that
individual’s express informed consent.
 Information disclosed should be limited required only
to fulfill the specific purpose.

4.  Any patient who is visiting health care centre should
be treated professionally.
 Any type of harm either physically or mentally should
be avoided.

5.  Patients have a right to expect that doctors will not
disclose any personal information which they learn
during the course of their professional duties unless
patient gives permission.

6.  When patients give consent to disclosure of
information about them, doctor must make sure that
they understand what will be disclosed, the reasons for
disclosure and the likely circumstances.
 Patient should have opportunity to withhold
information.
 Reliable health workers.

7.  Health care should be provided to everyone.
 Keeping in view the financial condition of patient.
 If required make arrangement of donation for patient.
 Consultant, doctors and paramedics fees.

8.  Healthcare centre facilities are for everyone who
approaches it.
 Avoid doctor/consultant monopoly.

9.  Record history, physiological parameters before and
after treatment.
 Keeping informed the patient or attendant about the
data that has been taken.
 Clinicians, by virtue of the trust placed in them by the
patient,can access the information in the record for
the benefit of the patient.
 Clinicians cannot, except under special circumstances,
deny the patient access to the medical information.

10. There are three main rationals;
 keeping information related to an individual in strict
confidence, for example, medical history of a patient.
 collecting anonymous data for statistical analysis, for
example, by conducting a healthcare survey; it is
vitally important to ensure that any data collected
cannot be used to identify a person or where it comes
from.
 Data Integrity; incorruptibility of data.

11. Internet privacy and confidentiality can be violated and
exploited in some of the following ways;
 Forwarded Mail
 E-mail address logs.
 Snippets of information compiled from multiple
sources.
 Other Intrusions

12.  Many people falsely assume that when they contact a
health care provider, their personal e-mail will go only
to the intended recipient.
 E-mail is routed through multiple servers from the
point of origination to the point of recipient.
 All these servers are potential points where e-mail can
be tapped.

13.  Websites can automatically capture and permanently
store e-mail addresses into log files.
 Any Web site manager can easily gather email
addresses from viewers, build a mailing list, and send
e-mail solicitations for commercial products.
 Patient could be targeted by embarrassing or
otherwise undesirable advertising campaigns without
any easy means of removal from such lists.

14. Four main technological risks are;
 Quality of images
 Lack of suitable equipment
 Malfunctioning equipment
 Inadequate Guidelines

15.  Poor communication.
 Limited Ability.
 Poor Training.
 Improper Delegation.
 Unclear Responsibility.

16.  Backup is the process of making exact copies of the
data in another storage medium so that the data can
be retrieved in the event of a loss or failure of the
original copy.

17.  Many devices are available for making a network more
secure that may include purpose built devices or
software installed on a computer.
 Security can be performed of different types such as ;
 identifying an individual user,
 granting access to part or all of a system,
 logging activities during a session,
 filter incoming and outgoing data based on types,
 origin or destination,
 inclusion of certain keywords, etc.

18.  Ace Allan, Marlene M. Maheu "E-Health, Telehealth
and Telemedicine", 2001, Jossey Boss Inc., A Wiley
Company.
 A.C. Norris, "Essentials of Telemedicine and Telecare",
2002, by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
 Bernard Fong, "Telemedicine Technologies", 2011, by
John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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