Provincial administrative board forbids sending of X-rays to India for remote interpreting
Compromised patient safety used as argument; final ruling sought in court
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The Western Finland Provincial Administrative Board has issued a negative decision with regard to the Seinäjoki-based company LifeIT's application for having Finnish patients’ X-ray images interpreted as remote work by doctors in India.
The ruling was reached after much consideration, and according to Heikki Siirilä, head of the Board’s Public Health Committee, its strongest arguments related to patient safety.
Siirilä has a long list of compromising factors that could put patient safety in jeopardy, if X-rays were interpreted through remote work.
The Indian doctors are not licensed to practice in Finland. They have no access to the patients’ case histories, and asking further questions is not possible in practice.
Furthermore, the Provincial Administrative Board would not be able to check on the condition of LifeIT’s premises and equipment, as the firm would only forward the X-ray images on, and it would have nothing to check.
The language barrier is also a problem, and LifeIT could under no circumstances be granted the permission, because the firm’s responsible director is not a medical doctor.
The director referred to, LifeIT managing director Teemu Paavola, is not a physician, but has a licentiate in technology degree instead.
However, Paavola does not understand, let alone accept the board’s arguments.
“The Provincial Administrative Board made a decision over the wrong matter. At no stage was our aim to suggest that a doctor in Finland would consult with a doctor in India”, Paavola explains.
According to Paavola, the idea is simply to request similar type of expert opinions from India that Finnish doctors ask for on a daily basis for example from hospital physicists or chemists.
"Considerable economic interests are attached to this matter. Of course they should not affect the authorities’ decisions, but perhaps this is what has happened”, Paavola reckons and reads an excerpt from a Parliamentary Future Committee report regarding health care.
The report sees the scanning of X-ray images and sending them to countries of cheap labour as a promising business idea that could be turned into a product to suit the Nordic market.
LifeIT has not thrown in the towel quite yet. An overruling of the Provincial Administrative Board’s decision will be applied for with the Turku Administrative Court.
Even Siirilä agrees that this is the right thing to do. “The law is outdated”, he says. “To apply for a probated prejudgement on the matter is a very good idea.”
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 8.4.2009 - TODAY |
 Provincial administrative board forbids sending of X-rays to India for remote interpreting |
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