Towards Smart Online Dispute Resolution for Medical Disputes

With the advancements in technologies, digitization of health records in the healthcare industry is undertaking a rapid revolution. This is further fueled with the entrance of Internet of Things (IoT), where mobile health devices have resulted in an explosion of health data and increased accessibility via wireless communications and sensor networks. With the introduction of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system as an important venture for the general health and wellbeing of a country's citizens, privacy issues and medical disputes are expected to rise. In addition to critical health information being documented and shared electronically, integrating data from diverse smart medical IoT devices are leading towards increasingly more complex disputes that require immense time and effort to resolve. Online dispute resolution (ODR) programs have been successfully applied to cost-effectively help disputants resolve commercial, insurance and other legal disputes, but as yet have not been applied to healthcare. This paper takes a modest step in this direction, firstly to identify the drivers of medical disputes that include patient empowerment and technology advancements and trends. Secondly, we explore dispute resolution models and identify the status and limitations of current ODR systems.