Legal Aspects of Computer Use in Medicine

Abstract

On July 5, I967, a computer in Washington, D.C., analyzed electrocardiograms of patients in France and returned interpretations within thirty seconds.1 That feat, which utilized a communications satellite, dramatized the intimate involvement of medicine with the current interrelated technological revolutions in electronic information processing and communications. Since the rendering of medical care largely is a series of information processing functions, increasingly those functions will be delegated to computers with varying degrees of responsibility.2 Being alerted to that development, laymen and lawyers alike promptly become curious about the legal rights and liabilities of the various participants in the process of using computers in medicine. These participants include not only patients and doctors but also hospitals and other suppliers of specialized data processing services, manufacturers of computers and other equipment, system designers, and programmers. Imaginative doctors and medical engineers foresee great benefits to patients from the use of the new technology. They are working actively to develop a wide variety of applications.3 Equally imaginative plaintiffs' lawyers, on the other hand, undoubtedly will develop new applications of tort liability theory to secure damages for harm suffered by patients. Those lawyers might inquire, for example, along the following, very diverse lines: Can a doctor escape liability to a patient injured by his using a computer system to administer anesthesia? Is it legally safe for a doctor to fail to use a computer diagnosis system or simulation system for pretesting treatment? May the operator of a diagnosis system cater to laymen? Do hospital charity patients have a right of privacy that guarantees freedom from routine treatment by medical students when computer-operated teaching dummies are available? May a patient harmed by a flaw in a computerized intensive care monitor sue the system manufacturer on the basis of strict liability? This article considers some representative legal considerations related to uses of