Legal medicine and medical law in the 21st century

global perspectives and future directions

Abstract

The paper to follow examines what constitutes legal medicine and medical/health law to consider and compare their role in the delivery of health care and justice. It explores an overview of the changes that have impacted legal medicine in the 21st Century with a particular focus on the contributions of both telemedicine, especially since the Covid Pandemic, and the emerging role of artificial intelligence. It has highlighted the positives and negatives of both of these concepts and how they have influenced the evolution of medical care within the community. It touches upon the move to patient-centred medicine and examines how technology has empowered patients to anticipate the care provided while concurrently empowering them to more proactive litigation. This has been further enhanced by the Australia approach to ‘no win/no pay’ litigation in which the Plaintiff does not face immense costs should litigation fail. It also examines the clarification of what constitutes proper professional care, within the Australian context. It explores the move from the Bolam Principle which dominated, until the end of the last century, to the establishment of greater certainty in which the Courts decide what must be imparted to the patient, to allow true informed consent/refusal, and what constitutes proper medical care which is the purvey of the medical profession.