Legal aspects of telemedicine in Austria

The rapid development of modern communication technologies offers new opportunities for medical diagnosis and treatment. In spite of the obvious theoretical benefits of telemedicine, which have been proven by many projects in practice, telemedicine has not become generally established in Europe. Besides lack of technical standardisation and high purchase costs, one of the reasons might be the as yet unclarified legal situation. Taking the present legal situation in Austria we tried to explore questions of liability concerning telemedicine. The outstanding point seems to lie in the contract between the participating physicians on the one hand and between the physicians and the patient on the other hand. If the consulting physician is self-employed he has to take responsibility for any error on the part of the consulted physician. However, if he is working in a hospital, then he is legally considered an ''Erfullungsgehilfe'' (person employed by the debtor in the performance of his obligation) an any further doctor consulted is automatically also an ''Erfullungsgehilfe'' of the hospital and therefore the hospital takes responsibility for any mistakes made by the consulted physician. Although there has not been any specific jurisdiction concerning telemedicine in Austria, the present legal provisions are adequate for reaching decisions on questions of liability, so that there are no objections from the legal point of view to the general implementation of telemedicine.