Introduction
The advancement of technology has essentially led to the development of more sophiscated methods or ways of diagnosing various diseases that human beings suffer from. One phenomenon that has come into being is the radiographic images electronic transmission from one geographical area to the other for the purposes of consultation and/or diagnosis. This is what is termed as Teleradiology. There are various studies that have been carried out concerning this topic hence it is a topic that one can choose a particular position and comfortably support it. The topic of Teleradiology is an imperative topic because day in day out people get various health complications and it is worth to note that Teleradiology improves the patient care. Despite the success of Teleradiology in helping patients, ethical issues of confidentiality and security remain the main challenges to be addressed in this field of treatment.
While the perception that individuals or patients possess rights over flow of information about themselves is controversial, the notion of their confidentiality has actually been regarded from time immemorial as central plank of the medical ethics (Kumar and Krupinski 2008). Confidentiality and its related concepts of anonymity, security, secrecy, and privacy have essentially been widely discussed in literature on the epidemiological research and health informatics. However, this issue of confidentiality remains unsuccessful in its implementation despite numerous campaigns done by human rights activists as required by the medical ethics. The fact that Teleradiology involves distant communications and electronic data need not add new factor to old fashioned problems about keeping the paper records of a client as confidential as possible.
There have been various instances where confidential information about the health status of patients has been accessed by individuals who are not supposed to access that information hence this contradicts the medical ethics. In Teleradiology, data about health status of patients is stored in the electronic networks (Poli and Dinevski 2009). Comparing this information with the one that is stored in paper records we observe that this information is more flexible hence this makes it impossible for the ethical standard of confidentiality and security to be upheld. The nature of confidentiality obligation in essence is same that is, to ensure that patients’ information is only accessed by those who have the mandate to access it. However, this has not been the case since other individuals have been accessing these data for various purposes such as research without patients’ consent.
The other confidentiality and security issue relates to provision of the international services. The legal principles of confidentiality differ from nation to nation. A patient whose physician needs an opinion in a particular country would actually expect information to be secured under the standards of his or her country (Poli and Dinevski 2009). Nevertheless, this may fail to be the case hence this explains why the challenge of confidentiality and security remains difficult to be addressed.
However, there are those who do not see the issue of confidentiality as a serious issue. These individuals base their arguments on further Teleradiology research since they say that this research is only possible when information about patients using these services is made available to them. The ongoing success in Teleradiology is greatly contributed by these studies but my opinion is that if researchers are to be provided with these information they should get consent from the patients since failure to do this violates the medical ethics. In addition, it appears reasonable that Teleradiology partners have contractual agreements that lay out conditions under which the information is both transmitted and used.
References
Kumar, S., & Krupinski, E. A. (2008). Teleradiology. Berlin: Springer.
British Institute of Radiology. (2000). Teleradiology: An introduction and definition. London: British Institute of Radiology.
BarCharts, Inc. (2008). Argumentative essay: A basic guide to writing the argumentative or persuasive essay. Boca Raton: BarCharts, Inc.
Poli, A., & Dinevski, D. (2009). Standards and recommendations in Teleradiology information systems. (Nova vizija tehnologij prihodnosti, 165-170.)
