Page 17 - Part 1 Introduction to Telemedicine

SVMIC Introduction to Telemedicine

Email, texting, file and photo sharing, online reference material,

audio/video recording and activity tracking have obvious medical
uses but are much more widely used for social purposes. Which

uses of these technologies constitute telemedicine? Applications
with both dubious and bona fide healthcare purposes appeared

early in the mobile device market and now number in the

hundreds of thousands. Even medical records are becoming
7
virtualized; inexorably migrating from siloed repositories controlled

by providers to multi-user, multi-access databases in cyberspace,
increasingly controlled by patients.

Standard Email, Webmail

In some sense, it’s obvious when a doctor is “providing healthcare
at a distance”; but, common sense does not determine whether a

given scenario would be defined as “telemedicine” from a

regulatory or financial perspective. From a legal standpoint, the
answer starts with the question whether “practice of medicine” is

occurring, but it does not end there. A telephone call between a
doctor and a patient certainly can entail the practice of medicine

and might meet every logical criterion for care at a distance, but it

would probably not be defined as telemedicine under most official
regulations. For that matter, the same is true for a postal letter with

medical advice. Without reading the fine print in the definitions
from legal authorities and payers, it is impossible to know.

This uncertainty challenges the regulatory infrastructure that
healthcare has relied upon for generations. Authorities today are

struggling to adapt to the implications of interstate electronic

commerce in many areas, not just medicine, and the problem is

7 https://research2guidance.com/325000-mobile-health-apps-available-in-2017/ [7/5/2018]

Page | 17