Telemedicine: Potential risks to patients

A report by Europe Economics (commissioned by the General Medical Council) dated 1 March 2018 identified some of the key challenges affecting the provision of telemedicine in the UK as:

• challenges in accessing long-term patient medical records for use in diagnosing and/or treating patients
• verifying the identification of patients
• the use, in some cases, of communications outside of real time (e.g. emails, questionnaires) to obtain initial information before diagnosing or treating a patient
• the abuse, by patients, of confidentiality requests to restrict the flow of information between the telemedicine provider and their primary healthcare provider

These challenges are compounded by the risk of misdiagnosis (whether due to incorrect or inaccurate information being provided by a patient or an incorrect or uninformed assessment by a healthcare professional), a denial of access to certain services (e.g. if, prior to a consultation, it is determined by a questionnaire or automated means that a patient does not require an in person or telephone consultation) or a hesitance by patients to utilise telemedicine services. For example, a study published by the University of Cambridge in 2021 concerning the use of telemedicine in rheumatology found that, of the study respondents, 86% of patients and 96% of clinicians felt that telemedicine was worse than in-person consultations for the accuracy of assessment and building trust. The study also found that telemedicine was perceived to have increased misdiagnoses, inequalities and barriers to accessing care.

Although it is possible that advances in AI and other medical technologies could operate to improve accuracy and efficiency in telemedicine, those technologies carry their own inherent risks and obstacles. It is therefore important that these are considered and addressed collectively alongside the issues facing telemedicine as a whole to grow confidence in, and increase uptake of, these technologies.

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