Ethics in Telehealth : Comparison between Guidelines and Practice-based Experience -the Case for Learning Health Systems. (2020)
Type of Content
Journal ArticlePublisher
Georg Thieme Verlag KGISSN
0943-47472364-0502
Language
EnglishCollections
- Health: Journal Articles [151]
Authors
Alternative Title
Ethics in Telehealth : Comparison between Guidelines and Field Experience -the Case for Learning Health SystemsAbstract
OBJECTIVES:To understand ethical issues within the tele-health domain, specifically how well established macro level telehealth guidelines map with micro level practitioner perspectives. METHODS:We developed four overarching issues to use as a starting point for developing an ethical framework for telehealth. We then reviewed telemedicine ethics guidelines elaborated by the American Medical Association (AMA), the World Medical Association (WMA), and the telehealth component of the Health Professions council of South Africa (HPCSA). We then compared these guidelines with practitioner perspectives to identify the similarities and differences between them. Finally, we generated suggestions to bridge the gap between ethics guidelines and the micro level use of telehealth. RESULTS:Clear differences emerged between the ethics guidelines and the practitioner perspectives. The main reason for the differences were the different contexts where telehealth was used, for example, variability in international practice and variations in the complexity of patient-provider interactions. Overall, published guidelines largely focus on macro level issues related to technology and maintaining data security in patient-provider interactions while practitioner concern is focused on applying the guidelines to specific micro level contexts. CONCLUSIONS:Ethics guidelines on telehealth have a macro level focus in contrast to the micro level needs of practitioners. Work is needed to close this gap. We recommend that both telehealth practitioners and ethics guideline developers better understand healthcare systems and adopt a learning health system approach that draws upon different contexts of clinical practice, innovative models of care delivery, emergent data and evidence-based outcomes. This would help develop a clearer set of priorities and guidelines for the ethical conduct of telehealth.
Citation
Kuziemsky CE, Hunter I, Gogia SB, Iyenger S, Kulatunga G, Rajput V, Subbian V, John O, Kleber A, Mandirola HF, Florez-Arango J, Al-Shorbaji N, Meher S, Udayasankaran JG, Basu A (2020). Ethics in Telehealth: Comparison between Guidelines and Practice-based Experience -the Case for Learning Health Systems.. Yearbook of medical informatics.This citation is automatically generated and may be unreliable. Use as a guide only.
Keywords
ethics; telehealth; learning health system; informaticsANZSRC Fields of Research
11 - Medical and Health Sciences::1117 - Public Health and Health Services::111711 - Health Information Systems (incl. Surveillance)50 - Philosophy and religious studies::5001 - Applied ethics::500106 - Medical ethics
Rights
All rights reserved unless otherwise statedRelated items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
How to conduct meta-analysis: a basic tutorial
Basu A (2017)Meta analysis refers to a process of integration of the results of many studies to arrive at evidence syn- thesis. Meta analysis is similar to systematic review; however, in addition to narrative summary that is conducted ... -
Health informatics community priming in a small nation: the New Zealand experience.
Parry D, Hunter I, Honey M, Holt A, Day K, Kirk R, Cullen R. (University of Canterbury. School of Health Sciences, 2013)New Zealand (NZ) has a rapidly expanding health information technology (IT) development industry and wideranging use of informatics, especially in the primary health sector. The New Zealand government through the National ... -
Reconsidering movement and exposure: Towards a more dynamic health geography
Marek L; Hobbs M; Campbell, Malcolm (Wiley, 2021)Acknowledging a paucity of emerging research, and some variation by sub‐field, the geographical measures of exposure used in health and medical geography have largely stagnated often focusing on residence‐based (‘static’) ...