Telehealth in Light of Cloud Computing: Clinical, Technological, Regulatory and Policy Issues

In the health sector, information and communications technologies (ICT) are transforming the modes of practice and service delivery. Telehealth, which is the use of ICT to provide care and health services, is an example of this new model of services. However, telehealth is accompanied by many questions regarding the terms of exchange, archiving, control and security of medical and administrative patient data. These may be very useful but also harmful to patients, healthcare professionals, organizations and even countries. Indeed, with the globalization of information, national data protection policies are being overtaken by this new reality where the "regulatory sovereignty" of a country is challenged. The increasing use of Cloud Computing, as a form of exchange, management and storage of data in the practice of telehealth, is an illustrative example of such challenges