Demiris George
Department of Health Management and Informatics, University of Missouri-Columbia, 324 Clark Hall, Columbia, MO 65211, USA.
Patient Educ Couns. 2006 Aug;62(2):178-88. doi: 10.1016/j.pec.2005.10.003. Epub 2006 Jan 6.
This paper providers an overview and discussion of virtual communities in health care. Furthermore, we aim to discuss in this context ethical, legal and technical considerations and the current status of research in this domain.
We searched medical and social science literature including survey studies, randomized and non-randomized controlled interventions and reviews.
The literature indicates that a virtual community in health care as a group of people using telecommunication with the purposes of delivering health care and education, and/or providing support, covers a wide range of clinical specialties, technologies and stakeholders. Examples include peer-to-peer networks, virtual health care delivery and research teams. Ethical challenges including the concepts of identity and deception, privacy and confidentiality and technical issues, such as sociability and usability are discussed.
Virtual communities may empower patients and enhance coordination of care services; however, there is not sufficient systematic evidence of the effectiveness of virtual communities on clinical outcomes or patient empowerment. Researchers need to address issues, such as sample sizes and experimental design to further the research field in this domain.
When practitioners utilize virtual community tools to communicate with patients or colleagues they have to maximize sociability and usability of this mode of communication, while addressing concerns for privacy and the fear of de-humanizing practice, and the lack of clarity or relevance of current legislative frameworks.
本文概述并讨论了医疗保健领域中的虚拟社区。此外，我们旨在在此背景下讨论伦理、法律和技术方面的考量以及该领域的研究现状。
我们检索了医学和社会科学文献，包括调查研究、随机和非随机对照干预以及综述。
文献表明，医疗保健领域的虚拟社区作为一群通过电信进行交流以提供医疗保健和教育及/或提供支持的人群，涵盖了广泛的临床专业、技术和利益相关者。示例包括对等网络、虚拟医疗保健服务提供和研究团队。文中讨论了伦理挑战，包括身份和欺骗概念、隐私和保密问题，以及技术问题，如社交性和可用性。
虚拟社区可能增强患者能力并改善护理服务的协调；然而，关于虚拟社区对临床结果或患者赋权有效性的系统证据不足。研究人员需要解决样本量和实验设计等问题，以推动该领域的研究。
当从业者利用虚拟社区工具与患者或同事交流时，他们必须最大限度地提高这种交流方式的社交性和可用性，同时解决对隐私的担忧、对非人性化实践的恐惧，以及当前立法框架缺乏清晰度或相关性的问题。
