The human challenge of telemedicine: toward a time-sensitive and person-centered ethics of home telecare

Telepatients using connected objects to collect time-sensitive data about their health are not neutral carriers of diagnosable symptoms.

Patients are persons, or personal beings as well as co-carers, whose personal experience, history and know-how must be acknowledged in time-sensitive telecare practices.

Such practices require a relational ethics, inspired by medical ethics and an ethics of virtues, focusing on vulnerability and emotional health, to oversee telecare good practices, define a new therapeutic alliance compliant with patients' values, and reconcile the technical and human sides of telemedicine.