By: Barrie Quappé RN, BSN – Consultant/Director:
The giddying pace of our use of all things internet has not omitted the field of medicine. Imagine being able to do your counseling online without leaving the privacy of your home. Appealing, isn’t it? The privacy and security of this raises all kinds of questions and the research into this is quickly growing. How do you evaluate that? A privacy and security checklist was developed and the same authors further utilized this to:
“…perform a risk analysis of the top ten VoIP videoconferencing software to determine if their policies provide answers to the privacy and security checklist. Sixty percent of the companies claimed they do not listen into video-therapy calls unless maintenance is needed.” (Watzlaf, Moeini, Matusow and Firouzan, 2011, p.3)
A recent study of E-therapy and the ethics notes that:
“The question arises on the ethical dilemmas since the licensing laws have not yet caught up with the rapid pace of technology. The salient ethical dimensions of e-therapy include competence, credentialing, informed consent, exceptions to confidentiality, as well as privacy and security limits (Corey, Corey and Callanan, 2007 as cited in Kotsopoulou, Melis, Koutsompou and Karasarlidou, 2015, p. 492)
These authors further recommend:
“Other factors to consider include making sure you have provided adequate emergency contact information in case your distance client faces a crisis, and ensuring your patient’s privacy and confidentiality are adequately protected by encrypting electronic transmissions and records.”
Does the Cayman Islands have any legislation or guidelines for this? When I inquired, the response was we do not.
Perhaps it’s time practitioners actively inform government of the much-needed coverage for this area. It has the potential for expanding small business but without clear parameters, it could go horribly wrong.
Examples of this in the UK can be seen here. The development of apps for healthcare is also on the rise.
It’s an exciting time to be in healthcare but there is a plethora of work to be done to ensure the Cayman Islands keeps pace with these latest healthcare delivery options.
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Relevant Links:
- Kotsopoulou,A., Melis, A., Koutsompou, V. and Karasarlidou, C. (2015) ‘E-therapy: the ethics behind the process’, Procedia Computer Science, 65, pp.492 – 499
- Watzlaf,V., Moeini,S., Matusow, L. and Firouzan, P. ( 2011) ‘VOIP for Telerehabilitation: A Risk Analysis for Privacy, Security and HIPAA Compliance: PartII’, International Journal of Telerehabilitation, 3(1), pp.3-10.