Legal and Technical Considerations on Unified, Safe and Data-Protected Haptic Telepresence in Healthcare

Abstract

Robot-assisted haptic telepresence has the potential to enable timely and regular access to general practitioners and medical specialists, while eliminating infection risks. However, the legal situation in the European Union (EU) with respect to telemedicine is complex and no international standards for compliant remote examination exists. As a result, manufacturers of telemedical tools tend to provide closed proprietary solutions that cannot be tightly integrated along with solutions from other manufacturers. Up until today, this makes telemedical stations, which require a multitude of examination tools, largely impractical. In this paper, we outline the legal framework of telemedicine in the EU and discuss practical implications with respect to physical safety, data security and system usability. For that, we have implemented a telemedicine station prototype using commercially available telemedical tools. Based on our findings, we propose a novel approach to integrate diagnostics and haptics into one closed control loop to enable safe and effective remote examinations. We conclude by summarizing required future steps to create a solid legal embedding for our system architecture and haptic telepresence in healthcare.