A) INTRODUCTION TO TELEMEDICINE:
Telemedicine services will involve exchange of information based on telecommunication such as internet, electronic data generation, voice, video, storage and sharing of information related to patient’s medical, transactional and identification records to enable care providers/doctors/hospitals at different locations to share individual patient medical information, diagnosis, treatment details for the purpose of providing or improving patient care. The information shared in between care providers is based entirely on text data, laboratory values and images provided by the patient, their caretakers or other service providers. Telemedicine Services may use a two-way audio/video/offline messages whereby the Doctors / Service provider’s staff can see my image the screen/ hear patient’s voice/ review patient’s medical records as needed for delivering appropriate medical care services. The proceedings of telemedicine sessions may be recorded for quality review or as might be required by my health coverage plan, or legal statute. Unlike a physical visit and seeing the patient in person, the Doctors / care providers / service staff using Telemedicine cannot use other senses such as touch or smell and cannot counter- check the reliability, accuracy and completeness of the images, information provided, and may, very rarely, result in judgment errors and stopping or postponement of the service delivery.
Although the electronic systems used will incorporate security protocols to protect data, a breach of privacy of personal medical information is theoretically possible. Sometimes there may also be interruptions or degraded data quality during transmission resulting in non-clear image/colour variations, postponement or stoppage of the telemedicine service.
Patients will not hold the care providers/organizations and their personnel directly or indirectly involved with any aspect of the Telemedicine setup responsible in the unlikely event of cancellation/postponement or error in the delivery of services due to the occurrence of technical disruptions beyond the control of the service providers.
My medical data may be used for research and analysis purposes without disclosure of my personal identity details to promote the cause of betterment in health care.
