TELEMEDICINE AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

Digitization in healthcare covers many topics such as artificial intelligence, robotic surgery, wearable health technologies, nanotechnology, 3D printers, virtual reality applications, electronic prescription, and remote health delivery services (telemedicine). Among these developments, telemedicine is one of the applications that are expected to cause significant changes in the classical patient-physician relationship in the near future. Telemedicine is defined as the use of electronic information and communication technologies to provide and support health services in situations where distance is a problem. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), telemedicine applications are divided into five main categories: teleradiology, teledermatology, telepathology, telepsychiatry, and telemonitorization. Due to the increasing need and demand after the COVID-19 epidemic in Turkey, the "Regulation on the Delivery of Remote Health Services" was published in the Official Gazette dated 10.02.2022. Telemedicine applications, which are fast, effective and financially sustainable healthcare services, have various advantages and disadvantages. This system offers main advantages such as increasing the quality of health services, decreasing economic costs, providing equally accessible health services to everyone, including those living in different age groups and/or rural areas, alleviating the workload of the emergency service, and preventing the increasing incidence of violence in health. Besides lack of face-to-face communication, insurance payment coverage, and digital security problems are the possible disadvantages of the system. The lack of the necessary legal infrastructure and the new implementation of telemedicine pose significant risks in terms of malpractice. In addition to informed consent, diagnosis, follow-up, treatment, consultation, and medical record processes, in these cases, it is important for medical malpractice evaluation to reveal the differences between telemedicine from classical medical education teachings and to draw its legal framework clearly. In our study, it is planned to guide the possible processes in Turkey by considering the approaches to malpractice in the practices of countries where telemedicine is applied.