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Well, when the patient has a procedure, of course,
there's a necessity, an obligation to provide informed consent.
And the patient has to be informed about
the risks that are associated with the procedure.
They need to decide if they're willing to accept those risks.
But what risks do we discuss?
If you think about the risk of something
happening or the possibility of something happening,
imagine if every time you got into a taxi,
you had to sign a document that said,
we could be hit by a truck,
we could be hit by a bird,
we could fall into a pothole,
we could fall into a sinkhole,
we could be carjacked,
we could catch an infection from the car seat or the door handle,
or I may overcharge you,
someone may hack into the system and I may overcharge you and not realize it.
And on and on and on. Right? So, there's
an infinite number of ways that things could happen that could go wrong.
If we did that to every anxious patient or to
a parent or to another loved one who
was caring for someone who is undergoing a procedure,
they couldn't make a useful or rational decision about the real risks.
Those that are more likely,
those that might be more life threatening or cosmetic.
Those that would really influence their decision.
So there is some judgment that come to me about what to
discuss and what not to discuss knowing the patient,
knowing their needs, and knowing what they have to undergo.
So, I think it's too early to really say for sure.
However, I can imagine a day when a patient will
need a procedure of some kind perhaps for a medical device or
perhaps a treatment with a high energy with radiation
for cancer where perhaps in the news just that week or the day before,
there was news of a cyber attack or vulnerability
and there's a real issue that perhaps things are being affected.
And I imagine when that day comes and if it's
real that that will have to be part of the conversation.
Do you want to put off the procedure because something just happened and maybe
the batch of pacemakers that are being implanted this month might be vulnerable.
Maybe we should hold off.
I could imagine that being very relevant to that patient at
that time and that is the case always with informed consent.
It has to be relevant to the patient at that time.
So at this point,
there are too many theoretical considerations and we would just drive people crazy
and scare them unnecessarily and we couldn't quantify any of these things either.
So they say, well okay, that's a concern.
I guess, I've been hearing in the newspaper about all these attacks and cyber attacks.
What's the likelihood that will happen to me?
Boy, let's go through it.
We're probably going to use what, 10, 20, 30,
40 medical devices over the next,
say, two days in the hospital.
We don't have any data on whether any of them have been hacked.
We don't know whether it will pose a risk to you.
So we'll do what we always do which was we'll have people monitoring you,
visiting you, and assessing you.
And if we're concerned about something and if the device isn't working correctly,
we will address it whether or not there is an installation problem,
whether or not there's another malfunction or whether it's a cyber-related attack.
It makes no difference.
Either way, we're responsible for being vigilant and
doing our best to deliver care. So time will tell.
Lauren SolbergAssistant Professor
