Doctors And The Misuse Of Technology

from the is-this-really-that-hard? dept

You would think that common sense would prevent these sorts of things from happening, but as per usual, money seems to get in the way of common sense. A doctor has been fined for prescribing drugs over the internet to patients he never met. He's certainly not the only one. There are all sorts of stories about greedy doctors willing to randomly prescribe just about any kind of controlled substance via various (less than legit) online pharmacy sites. Meanwhile, though, do doctors really need to be warned not to diagnose patients based on camera phone photos? Apparently, many general practitioners are snapping quick shots of patients to send off to specialists for a diagnosis. While I can see how such photos can be useful for follow up treatments, it seems a bit questionable to do a full diagnosis based on one. At the same time, there's the risk of a privacy violation of a doctor sending the photo to someone else. Of course, that's a risk that people take any time they send information anywhere. Still, it sounds like there's an opportunity for someone to create a better (secure) system for physicians to exchange photos.