The Potential for Undue Patient Exposure during the Use of Telementoring Technology

Background Surgical telementoring holds great promise for safe and effective patient care and medical education, but recording and streaming audio and video introduces the potential for exposure of patient information. Physicians maintain an ethical responsibility to protect the privacy of patients, and privacy violations may carry significant legal liability. Despite the legal treatment of violations as discrete, methods for quantifying and characterizing the exposure of patient information during procedural recordings are lacking. This study is the first to quantify the potential risk for violation of privacy when using a wearable, telementoring technology capable of video and audio recording during surgical procedures in various locations including the operating room, interventional radiology suite, and the intensive care unit. Methods A head-mounted recording device, Google Glass™, was used to record routine neurosurgical and critical care procedures in a convenience sample of patients. Periods of maximal risk, including the beginning of procedures, were targeted. Recordings were manually coded for discrete instances of exposure of directly identifying information and indirectly identifying information. Results Twenty-two procedures were recorded for a total of 12 hours, during which 807 directly identifiable exposures were found. The overall average rate of exposure was 1.13 exposures per minute. Most exposures were full-face images (90%), names (7%), or phone numbers (3%). Indirectly identifying exposures were found to be tattoos, genitals, and caretaker names. The rate of exposures was found to be lower in the operating room (OR) when compared to the intensive care unit (ICU) or interventional radiology (IR) suite (p = 0.0376). Conclusions High rates of potential privacy violations were discovered and found to be related the location of the procedure. Sterile draping of the face prior to recording, when appropriate, would mitigate most exposure risk, though patient names and unique tattoos may be an underappreciated source of potential exposure. This study establishes the most conservative baseline to compare techniques for preventing exposure of patient information on telementoring or video/audio recording/streaming platforms.