| Almost every point follows the same structure: > "Here is a real concern about implementation" → "Therefore you should refuse entirely" This skips the middle step of "therefore we should implement it well." I'm not convinced that we should be allowing doctors to record patient visits at this stage yet, but I'm really not convinced by these points, which largely don't hold up under closer examination. A few that stuck out: "Privacy" - Labs are routinely sent to third-party companies, and we don't do informed consent for that. The third-party argument isn't unique to recording. "False promise of efficiency" - This doesn't really have anything to do with patients at all. It's a criticism of medical office management, not of physician-patient interactions. Telling patients to refuse a tool because management might exploit the productivity gains is asking patients to fight a labor battle on the provider's behalf. "Consent can't be revoked mid-visit" - Consent typically can't be revoked in the middle of an appendectomy, or halfway through administering a vaccine either. Practical irrevocability is a normal feature of informed consent, not a special problem unique to recording. Proper consent processes in medical offices are a broader issue than consent about voice recordings specifically. Had the authors made the point that providers are being asked to obtain consent for tools whose technical implementation and privacy risks fall outside the provider's own domain knowledge — that would be a stronger argument. But that isn't quite the point they made, and their current framing doesn't wholly convince. |
Tech-naïve people think that we can build super duper encryption systems.
The more jaded amongst us know that people can get sloppy or complacent, it's rare to see a regulatory system that truly incentivises good practice, data breaches will happen eventually, and no-one will be held accountable.
This is a big one in recent memory: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/10/babylon-heal...