The ethical and policy implications of e-health and telemedicine: an ageing-focused review

Abstract

E-health and telemedicine programmes and systems offer much potential for supporting the health and wellbeing of older people, and are set to be promoted within the changing health-care landscape. This evolving model of technology-centred health care raises a number of ethical and regulatory issues, such as privacy, data protection, online professional practice, consent, accessibility and risk of confinement. Through this review we sought to analyse the European debate on the ethical and policy implications of e-health and telemedicine by identifying key ethical and regulatory issues and considering them against potential policy solutions.

Managing open innovation in connected health through a living lab

“…This is a second perspective for us. In addition, this paper introduces a case study performed in the living lab to better organize the care path in Telemedicine practice for the elderly [15]. This experiment will be helpful to illustrate the added value of the reference framework as an engineering foundation.…”

Integrating Telepsychiatry Based Care in Rural Acute Community Mental Health Services? A systematic literature review

“…Within the US based veteran telepsychiatry this was less of a concern as equipment and software was provided in some studies [29]. satisfaction and call dropout rate was measured [33]. The results were that fixed, national broadband network (NBN) connections were superior to mobile technology at the time and satisfaction levels were high.…”

Ethical assessment in e-Health

“…Informed consent can be obtained either via paper or online. Although obtaining consent online may be the most adequate form in specific applications, the remote nature of online environment might pose new challenges: People might give reluctant or uninformed consent and there is the increased risk of fraud [19]. Participation in EU funded project should be voluntary [17].…”

“…Given the scale of this crosscultural research, consideration attention should be given to equity and accessibility. The gap between the rich and poor has not narrowed despite attempts to tackle health inequalities [19]. Health disparities are typically drawn along the same line as socio-demographic inequalities, such as education level, household income, geographic location (rural or urban), race and ethnicity [21].…”