According to the latest data provided by the Information Industry Research Department, by 20 17, the scale of mobile medical market in China will reach125.3 billion yuan, and the trend is increasing. Compared with the current situation, there are more than 2,000 mobile medical apps in China, which are used to provide services such as medical consultation, booking registration, purchasing medical products and inquiring professional information. From this point of view, mobile medical APP has a trend of "blowout" development.
The proliferation of mobile medical APP is not only because it carries the advantages of Internet technology, such as saving time, rapid diagnosis, low cost, etc. Most importantly, it can alleviate the shortage of medical resources and enable people in need to realize rapid consultation. However, in practical APPlication, it is necessary to improve the use of mobile medical app from three aspects: medical resources, app developers and market supervision.
Lack of professional medical resources
At present, there are mainly B2B mode for hospital doctors and B2C mode for users in China.
There are four main types of medical mobile APP terminals: disease management and doctor-patient communication platforms, such as "Good Doctor Online"; Online consultation, such as "Spring Rain Pocket Doctor", advertising revenue is its main source of income; Drug management, such as the drug assistant in Lilac Garden, can be used by doctors to inquire about drug instructions, check the abstract and full text of drug instructions, and use common medical calculation tools; Introduce new products to doctors through medical literature, such as "medical literature" of Xinglin.
The core problem is that whether it is the management of chronic diseases or the provision of telemedicine to customers, what patients ultimately need is to obtain professional medical services, which means that the ultimate recipient of all data should be a doctor. However, doctors in public hospitals in China have not been fundamentally liberated, and it is difficult for doctors (especially those in top three hospitals) to provide detailed and sufficient professional advice to customers through these mobile medical devices and apps.
Throughout China, most of these apps are in the initial stage of user accumulation. Take the fiery consumer-grade medical concept equipment in the market as an example, most of them focus on the monitoring and recording of some simple data, such as blood pressure and blood sugar monitoring, female physiological cycle monitoring, temperature detection of women and children of childbearing age, etc., which is essentially a light consultation and cannot fundamentally solve the medical needs. Previously, some insiders also analyzed that "disease diagnosis requires medical history, symptoms, signs, auxiliary examinations, and finally diagnosis and treatment. Through the Internet, doctors often only know the symptoms of medical history, and other links can only be realized in hospitals. "
Because of the lack of professional medical resources, mobile medical APP will also increase the incidence of misdiagnosis, mistreatment and delay.
Despite such problems, the above-mentioned analysts also pointed out that in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases such as hypertension, if supplemented by wearable devices or household appliances with high data accuracy, mobile medical apps are still promising.
The "intermediary" responsibility of developers
Using mobile medical APP, in case of medical accident, how to divide the responsibilities?
It is difficult for ordinary users to determine the qualification and identity of "experts" at the other end of the network through APP. If a medical or drug accident occurs, the causal relationship between infringement and damage results and the legal responsibility between related subjects will become much more complicated. In addition, there will be implantable advertisements, false medical or drug advertisements on the APP.
Lawyer Ye Liu of Shanghai Maritime Law Firm believes that the legal position of Internet companies providing APP software should be intermediaries. Because they provide intermediary services or intermediary services and do not directly provide medical services, there is no legal problem with patients. However, Internet companies may also form a medical service contract relationship with both doctors and patients. At this time, the merchant is equivalent to sharing the obligations of some hospitals, so the Internet company directly forms a medical service contract relationship with patients, and whether it complies with the relevant provisions of the Law on Medical Practitioners can be considered.
For the entire mobile medical APP market, "First of all, the market is too chaotic, and various medical institutions and commercial organizations are engaged in remote consultation, but there is no standardized standard. The second is the blank of legal supervision. Therefore, the introduction of targeted administrative regulations is a top priority. In addition, data integration, protection and utilization of telemedicine are also urgent problems to be solved. " Liu Xin, research center of medical law and ethics of China University of Political Science and Law, said.
The regulatory system should keep up.
At present, there are many departments involved in the supervision of mobile medical app, and it is inevitable to clarify the responsibility.
For example, the medical mobile app will definitely involve the application of drugs, so it will be supervised by the Food and Drug Administration. Medical APP is an application about medical treatment and health, and it will also be supervised by the Health Supervision Bureau. Advertisements in mobile medical apps are subject to the supervision of the Administration for Industry and Commerce. For fraudulent medical consumption and sales of counterfeit and shoddy drugs, it also involves the supervision of the public security department.
"Clarifying the responsibilities of various departments can ensure the rationality and order of responsibilities, improve the efficiency of the supervision mechanism, and avoid the overlap and contradiction of the responsibilities of the main body of supervision." Deng Yong, law department of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, said.
In this regard, Liu Xin believes that the competent authorities should issue industry standards as soon as possible, especially the determination of technical standards. Secondly, a series of important legal issues should be solved as soon as possible, such as how government functional departments supervise telemedicine services, how to manage and deal with the services provided by doctors in telemedicine systems, and whether telemedicine services provided by doctors belong to medical practice.