This post cites and comments on a definition from a book edited by renown Healthcare informatics guru Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD (Handbook of Biomedical Informatics.
Wikipedia Books, December 2009--A dynamic collection of more than 250
Wikipedia articles).
This healthcare informatics treatise is recommended reading (and a recommended reference) for the many stakeholders in the industry who will be required to weigh (e.g. management teams, privacy and compliance officers, HIT, legal, etc.) in on EHR implementations and everything they touch .
What is cybermedicine?
According to the Handbook of Biomedical Informatics cybermedicine is defined as follows:
Cybermedicine is the use of the Internet to deliver medical services, such as medical consultations and drug
prescriptions. It is the successor to telemedicine, wherein doctors would consult and treat patients remotely via
telephone or fax.
Cybermedicine is already being used in small projects where images are transmitted from a primary care setting to a
medical specialist, who comments on the case and suggests which intervention might benefit the patient. A field that
lends itself to this approach is dermatology, where images of an eruption are communicated to a hospital specialist
who determines if referral is necessary.
A Cyber Doctor, is a medical professional who does consultation
via the internet, treating virtual patients, who may never meet face to face. This is a new area of medicine which has
been utilized by the armed forces and teaching hospitals offering online consultation to patients before making their
decision to travel for unique medical treatment only offered at a particular medical facility.
Cybermedicine is really not a new area of medicine but rather a new way to practice medicine underpinned by the same enabling technologies that are transforming practices of all kinds and in all industries. There is an entire laundry list of concepts that potentially fall under this rubric including: eHealth, Health 2.0, mobile health, etc. Sure, the semantics of each are slightly different but what they all have in common is the foundational 24/7 communications platform of the Internet.
Clearly, the relentless movement toward cybermedicine is an idea whose time has come. According to Victor Hugo (paraphrasing): "all the forces in the world are no match for it." We have argued consistently that innovation is the real disruptor in the healthcare industry. Government is playing a role (see the HITECH Act) mainly because it is attempting to underpin what is already occurring in the marketplace. In short, government is an enabler but not the driver.
That said, government is a powerful enabler because the force of law in a civilized society has great weight, and as such is capable of providing a significant acceleration effect to the marketplace. The bottom line is that the combination of marketplace innovation and government acceleration is the "perfect storm" for transforming the monopolistic tendencies of the U.S. healthcare industry. The transformation is inevitable, the form it will take will continue to be a work in progress for the next twenty years.
The intersection of cybermedicine and cyberlaw will continue to see significant development as legislators, judges and industry stakeholders attempt to balance competing forces and priorities.
For more information regarding the intersection of cybermedicine and cyberlaw visit the HIPAA Survival Guide website or sign up for Digital Business Law Group's free monthly compliance newsletter. Also, check out a FREE EHR Checklist and a FREE Online Backup Checklist, both provided HSG affiliates.
