TELEHEALTH: REGULATORY PROBLEMS

Abstract

Summary - The paper discusses distinctive aspects of introduction of modern information technologies into the health care practice and highlights that implementing the telecommunications will require not only the introduction of new techniques but also structural changes related to both procedural institutional background and interpersonal relationships. As indicated, in such conditions a medical specialist will need to modify judgment and knowledge to keep a traditional ‘patient-doctor’ relationship based on patient’s trust to doctor’s experience and skills, on the one side, and allow improving diagnostics and correctly selecting treatment strategies, on the other side, as soon as possible. If otherwise, this will result in the loss of a definition of ‘attending physician’ related with uncontrolled self-medication and medicinal drug trading, thus causing reduction of total population health and unreasonable depletion of healthcare system resources.