Journal of law and the biosciences
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Deemed consent for organ donation has long been discussed as a potential solution to the shortage of organs for transplantation, with several countries having implemented it. In Great Britain, Wales was the first nation to introduce such a system, having done so in 2015. Now, the other two nations are following suit. ⋯ Second, the role of government ministers in ensuring widespread public awareness. Third, the ways in which the two nations responded to the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to the implementation of deemed consent. I conclude that on all three points, the Scottish approach is preferable.
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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) public health emergency has amplified both the potential value and the challenges with healthcare providers deploying telehealth solutions. As people across the country find ways to stay at home, telehealth preserves an opportunity to obtain necessary healthcare services. Further, telehealth can help individuals avoid COVID-19 infection, free up hospital beds and other resources for those patients most in need, and prevent infected individuals from spreading that infection. ⋯ These changes can provide lasting benefits for the use of telehealth well after the current crisis. However, to best realize telehealth's benefits, further legal and regulatory actions are necessary. Specifically, lawmakers and regulators should focus on six areas: reimbursement, privacy/cybersecurity, liability, licensure, technology access, and artificial intelligence.
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There is much discussion of adopting COVID-19 immunity certificates to allow those proven to have antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 to resume normal life and help restart the economy. This article points out issues that must be considered before adopting any such program. ⋯ It does not ultimately take a position on whether some narrow COVID-19 immunity plans should be adopted, concluding that the answer depends on too many currently unknown conditions. But its seventh part makes recommendations to decision-makers who might consider implementing such programs.
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Proposals for allocating scarce lifesaving resources in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic have aligned in some ways and conflicted in others. This paper attempts a kind of priority setting in addressing these conflicts. ⋯ In the second part, we lay out some positions on which reasonable people can and do differ. These include (i) conflicts between maximizing benefits and priority to the worst off; (ii) role-based priority; and (iii) whether patients' existing lifesaving resources should be subject to redistribution.