Electronic
communication between care providers and their patients is
an essential component of medicine. However, there are still
sceptics because of widespread concerns regarding confidentiality
of medical information on the web.
E-mail is fast, cheap and frequently accessible feature. Tendency
of this project is to put results reporting via e-mail in
daily routine practice for both physicians and patients. Advantages
of sending lab results using e-mail are: doctor can have patients
lab results available as soon as possible on his computer
(he can act faster if necessary); results can easily be integrated
in the patient electronic medical record; patients do not
need to wait or to come again to the laboratory for their
results.
We form our own list of features for fully safe and secure
sending lab results: patients and doctors have to fill and
sign written acceptance; results data are send as attachment
in portable document format (Acrobat Reader®) which is
saved in standard secure form (allowing the recipient only
printing the document). There is return receipt request that
inform us when the message is received successfully. However,
a malicious computer expert can bypass this security measure,
and alter the results of tests. Furthermore, there could be
certain periods of time when Internet access would not be
available which is also one of the downsides of this system.
