3 Questions: Amar Gupta on an integrated approach to enhanced health-care delivery
The MIT researcher and former professor discusses how Covid-19 and the influx of virtual technologies created a new medical ecosystem that needs more synchronized oversight.
(Published in MIT NEWS, August 10, 2022)
Covid-19 was somewhat of a metaverse itself. Many of our domains turned digital — with much attention toward one emerging space: virtual care. The pandemic exacerbated the difficulties of providing appropriate medical board oversight to ensure proper standard of services for patients. MIT researcher and former professor Amar Gupta explores through his research on how different states approach quality, safety, and coordination issues related to telemedicine and health care — and how we need to take an integrated approach to address the interoperability challenge and enhance care delivery.
Q: Since the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic, how has the quality and landscape of patient care changed?
A: Covid-19 has served as a major catalyst for the adoption of virtual techniques in the U.S. and other countries around the globe. This adoption has occurred in many medical specialties, both in urban and rural areas. At the same time, it has raised several issues and challenges that need to be addressed on a priority basis.
In our recent research paper, we found that in the U.S., “the increased amount of virtual care during the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the challenge of providing appropriate medical board oversight to ensure proper quality of care delivery and safety of patients. This is partly due to the conventional model of each state medical board holding responsibility for medical standards and oversight only within the jurisdiction of that state board and partly due to regulatory waivers and reduced enforcement of privacy policies.”
The prevailing restrictions, related to privacy of patient medical records and the ability for doctors from other states to see those records, were temporarily removed or made less prohibitive. This, in turn, can lead to situations where more medical images can go on an unauthorized basis into the public domain.
Want to read more? Head here: https://news.mit.edu/2022/3-questions-amar-gupta-integrated-approach-enhanced-health-care-delivery-0810
Want to read more published work from Amar Gupta? See his latest article here: https://doi.org/10.30953/tmt.v7.363
