Medical blogs raise ethics issues

Detroit Free Press business writer, Margarita Bauza, reports medical blogs are raising ethic issues.

Issues of patient privavcy and confidentiality (obvious non blog topics) appear to be driving the ethics debate going on among medical blogs. But it reached a fever pitch in the media with the story of the doctor blogging his own medical malpractice trial.

I wonder if this isn’t like the lawyer blog ethics debate. Overblown by incestual blog discussion making for a good story in the main stream media.

It’s even gone so far that the author of medblogcode.blogspot.com has composed, with the help of other doctors, a medical blogger code of ethics. The code covers issues pertaining to confidentiality, privacy and commercial disclosure.

Microsoft’s blog policy that says ‘be smart’ would seem to cover things. What’s ‘smart’ just varies from blog type and the profession of the blog publisher. Any smart medical professional would know that blogging on issues relating to specific patients would be off grounds.

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