우리나라 원격진료의 시범사업과 의료법의 문제점

We are in living in the age of using of telecommunication and high technologies to improve the quality of life, and human health, especially various medicine fields. Telemedicine, which is the use of the transfer system of high information and advanced high technology, eliminates limits of time and distance. Early forms of telemedicine were done by telephone and radio consultations from medical center for patients aboard ships and remote island. Telemedicine is the order to reduce the cost of health care and to provide quality medical services in the wide territory began in the United States and Australia. There has been acceptable range, licences, and burden of medical costs of the telemedicine in each country. There are differences which vary from the state to the state in United State, but each state sets its own policies for a variety of matters telemedicine, such as Medicare and Medicaid programs, private insurers’ business models, privacy and data security of medical information, and medical licensing. Clinicians must be licensed by the state in which their telemedicine patient is receiving care in order to solve the legal problem. But there has still not been complete legal support except the law of the place and the device for the telemedicine in Korea. Pilot Project for Telemedicine in Korea has performed in spite of opposition from many stakeholder, such as Korean medical association and civic groups. Although the implementation of telemedicine in many countries, there has not been established for its efficacy improvement in aspect of clinical outcome and economic status compared with the face to the face methods in various medical field. In korea, telemedicine is still premature and the consensus among the stakeholder on the telemedicine and further randomized controlled trials for the sufficient scientific evidence must be done to determine where its use is most effective.