Mumbai, July 10, 2020: Institute of Medicine & Law (IML) conducted the 5th National Convention on Medicine & Law on July 05, 2020. This event is an influential and foremost meeting that discusses and deliberates on changes needed in laws relating to healthcare in India.
The convention was conducted online and streamed live to viewers, in view of the current pandemic, and was well attended by an extremely distinguished panel.
Session 1 was on “Organ Transplant in India – Legal Issues and Solutions”, and a few prominent problems, issues, and recommendations discussed therein are as follows:
- Low allocation in the state’s budget on health
- A big waiting list of organ-recipients is a big cause of concern
- Procedures / processes must be made easier, and monitoring these should be more robust
- Doctors / donors / recipients must not feel threatened
- Fear-psychosis amongst doctors must be addressed
- Focus must be on Tier II & Tier III cities
- Family of donor can be incentivised by giving them preference in getting organs
- A proper hierarchy of surrogate decision makers for donating organs must be prescribed by law
- Three definitions of death in Indian laws must be done away with – There should be a uniform determination of death
- Post-mortem of the dead body after retrieval of organ needs to be addressed on a high priority
- Procedures governing declaration of brain-stem death must be made easy
- Have more hospitals as organ retrieval centre
- Involve public hospitals at a bigger scale
- Medical students must be sensitized on this issue
- Better coordination between public hospitals and private hospitals
- Compulsion to have an audit committee for ICU deaths
- Media should not be over-reactive – Need to sensitize
- Police / hospitals must be sensitised about the correct legal position – Police has to be intimated about organ retrieval in case of a medico-legal case (patient) donating organs, no permission required
- Autopsy of medico-legal cases (patients) should be permitted in the organ retrieval centre
- Involve patients’ bodies and groups – Provide counselling, share stories, have recognition programs
- Need to improve the attitude of hospital staff – It has direct bearing on donations
Session 2 was on “Legal & Regulatory Framework for Tele-Health – The Way Forward” and a few prominent problems, issues, and recommendations discussed therein are as follows:
- Comprehensive, overarching legislation needed
- Apprehensions in minds of doctor and patients’ needs to be addressed
- Security of data, confidentiality, privacy, commercialization of medicine – A few important causes of concerns
- Acceptance of telemedicine by medical insurance providers & indemnity providers to doctors and hospitals
- Interoperability – Homogenous system needed
- Standardization of practice of telemedicine required
- Problem of geriatric population having visual and hearing problems
- Needs to be taught to doctors at an undergraduate level
- Regulations on remote sensing devices needed
- Problem of patients calling at odd hours, not paying fees, data charges of platforms, patients outside India, friendly advice, informal chats, adverse event reporting, bad audio / video, managing data, cyber security, different types of consultations, and so on needs to be clarified
- Need to use this data for public health surveillance
- Cyber security needs to be strengthened
Dr. T N Ravishankar, ex-President, IMA Tamil Nadu was the convenor of the first session, whereas Dr. Dilip Walke, ex-President, Medico-Legal cell, FOGSI was convenor of the second session. Dr. Parag Rindani, CEO Wokhardt Hospital, Mumbai Central was the moderator of both the sessions.
Dr. Bhagwat Karad, Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha and himself a paediatric surgeon noted that the convention has involved everybody, viz. doctors, experts in law, patient group, and representation from other countries also.
“A doctor has done his job till such time as he has given a reasonable standard of care. As a judge whenever a case would come to me, the scales of justice would always shift in favour of the doctor” said Justice Sunil Ambwani, Former Chief Justice of Rajasthan High Court, and also the Chairperson of the e-committee, Supreme Court of India.
“The nation today needs a central law on uniform determination of death, even the WHO has recommended, and many countries are following this…” was one of the key recommendations that was proposed by Mahendrakumar Bajpai, Advocate Supreme Court.
“We assure you that we will release a White Paper after this event, which will be taken to its logical conclusion by raising it to policy maker and relevant authorities” said Mr. Sunder Rajan, CEO of Institute of Medicine & Law, to a distinguished panel of policy makers, doctors, and legal luminaries.
The recorded event can be freely accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHbjt1fF2vk
THE ORGAN TRANSPLANT SESSION PANELLISTS
- Dr. Lalit Shah, Convenor – legal cell – Urological Society of India
- Dr. Sunil Shroff – Mohan Foundation
- Dr. Rahul Pandit, Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine, Associated with Fortis at Mulund-Mumbai
- Dr. Bharat Shah, Secretary – ZTCC Mumbai; Managing Trustee – Narmada Kidney Foundation; Director – Institute of Renal Sciences, Global Hospital, Mumbai
- Dr. Dhruva Chaudhary, President ISCCM
- Dr. Harish Pathak, HOD – Forensic Medicine, Seth G S Medical College
- Dr. Noble Gracious, KNOS – Kerala Network for Organ Support; Govt. Medical College
- Dr. Roop Gursahani, Consultant Neurologist, Hinduja Hospital
- Dr. S K Mathur – President – ZTCC
- Dr. Swarnalatha, Jeevandan, Telangana, NIMS
- Dr. Vasanthi Ramesh, Director NOTTO
- Adv. Mahendra Bajpai, Advocate – Supreme Court, Editor Emeritus – Medical Law Cases – For Doctors, Hon. Director – Institute of Medicine and Law
The Patient groups were represented by Dr. Ratna Devi who is the Chair of the International Alliance of Patient Organisations, a charity based out of UK. She is also the founder of Indian Alliance of Patient Groups and the founder board member of NCD Alliance in India.
INTERNATIONAL PARTICIPATION
- Dr. Prabhakar Baliga, has been in Transplantation as a practicing abdominal transplant surgeon for 30 years running a large volume program in Charleston, South Carolina performing more than 400 transplants a year. has been in leadership positions locally as Chair of department of Surgery and on the national board of the Organ and Procurement Transplant Network
- Dr. Ajith Tennakoon a forensic specialist; Chief Judicial Medical Officer – Department of Forensic Medicine, Institute of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Sri Lanka
- Dr. Joseph Palmero, Chief – Medico-Legal Division, Philippine National Police
- Dr. Maria Paula Gomez, Executive Director – DTI Foundation, Parc Científic de Barcelona, Barcelona, SPAIN
THE TELE-HEALTH SESSION PANELLISTS
- Dr. Ashvini Goel Colonel, President Elect, Telemedicine Society of India; Member, International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth (ISfTeH)
- B S Bedi, Sr. Director in Ministry of Electronics & IT and Headed Medical Electronics & Telemedicine Division; Member of the National Committee on EMR Standardization set up by MoHFW, COO of TSI and President TSI NCR Chapter
- Dr. B Shivashankar, President Elect – Indian Orthopaedic Association
- Dr. G S Bhattacharya, In-charge – Department of Medical Oncology, Salt Lake City Medical Centre, Kolkata; Senior Clinical Research Associate – Nuffield Division of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford
- Dr. Ganapathy Krishnan, Past President – Telemedicine Society of India & Neurological Society of India; Emeritus Professor – Tamilnadu Dr MGR Medical University; Member – WHO Digital Health Panel of Experts; Director – Apollo Telemedicine Networking Foundation & Apollo Tele Health Services
- Dr. Nagendra Swamy, Founder Chairman at Medisync Health Management Services Private Limited
- Dr. S Arulrhaj Prof, Chairman – Sundaram Arulrhaj Hospitals; National President – API 2020
- Dr. Sanjay Sood, Associate Director & Project Director (eSanjeevaniOPD) – C-DAC, Mohali
- Dr. Shreekant Shetty, Editor – Medical Law Cases – For Doctors; Member, Board of Collaborative Reviewers – MedLegal Yearbook; Managing Trustee – HAWK Foundation
- Dr. Subhal Dixit, Director ICU – Sanjeevan Hospital; Immediate Past President – ISCCM; Immediate Past Chancellor – ICCCM
- Amit Mohan, Business Head – LCS, LCS Digital & Inside Sales, GE Healthcare, India & South Asia Region
- Adv. Mahendra Bajpai, Advocate – Supreme Court; Editor Emeritus – Medical Law Cases – For Doctors; Hon. Director – Institute of Medicine & Law
- Adv. Dr. Milind Antani, Leads Pharma, Healthcare, Medical device, and Digital health practice
- Adv. Bagmisikha Puhan, Technology lawyer and privacy practitioner. Policy advocate for telemedicine, Legal advisor to the Telemedicine Society of India, Member of Executive Committee of the Society
INTERNATIONAL PARTICIPATION
Dr. Vikram Dogra, renowned Professor of Radiology, Urology, & Biomedical Engineering – Department of Imaging Science, University of Rochester, NY, USA & Founder Scientific Scholar publications a Journal publishing company. Ms. Olga Joos from CDC Foundation (US), Vital Strategies (US) and DTI Foundation (Spain) supported this event.
The Patient groups were represented by Dr. Ratna Devi who is the Chair of the International Alliance of Patient Organisations, a charity based out of UK. She is also the founder of Indian Alliance of Patient Groups and the founder board member of NCD Alliance in India.
Corporate Comm India (CCI Newswire)
