Cyber-Malpractice: Legal Exposure for Cybermedicine

Abstract

Health care providers and pharmaceutical companies have rapidly ramped up in their presence in cyberspace (cybermedicine). This article examines the content-related liability exposure of cybermedicine providers, mapping real space liability theories such as professional negligence, misrepresentation and products liability to cybermedicine fact-patterns. Cybermedicine encompasses not only the technology and legal issues of telemedicine, but also a far greater array of non-traditional, indeed unique technology-enabled interactions among health care providers and consumer-patients, including marketing, relationship-creation, advice, prescribing and the sale of drugs and devices. The article first describes the cyberspace business models of health care providers and summarizes the themes likely to pervade the discourse during the emergence of cybermedicine. The article then details the legal issues that are raised by health care institutions? web marketing, pharmaceutical manufacturers? web presence, marketing and product support, and by the proliferation of health-oriented advice sites. The article concludes with some brief observations about initial attempts at risk-managing cyber-malpractice exposure.

JEL Classification: K13, K32