Do experts from top tier hospitals promote drugs during online consultations? Five impersonated doctors angrily sued the court online | patients | drugs
With the development of Internet medicine, more and more patients with common and frequently occurring diseases begin to self check the cause of disease on the Internet and seek remedies through "online consultation". At the same time, many hospital experts have also launched services such as online free consultation, convenient outpatient services, and remote consultations.
Some unscrupulous individuals have smelled "business opportunities" from it, impersonating experts to provide health consultation services online, and using consumer psychology to carefully design language, boasting about their medical skills and efficacy, taking the opportunity to sell health products or fake drugs to patients. How to avoid "online consultation" becoming a "consultation trap"?
01
The website falsely uses the name of a doctor to mislead patients
Court: Judgment on Defendant's Website Infringement
Recently, the Beijing Internet Court has added a number of cases involving online tort liability disputes involving the health consulting service platform. The plaintiffs in these disputes are all doctors from major tertiary hospitals in Beijing. They accidentally discovered a large number of health related answers provided in their name on some platforms, and the answers contained content that clearly exceeded the normal scope of medical consultation responses.
Dr. Li is the deputy chief physician of the Rheumatology and Immunology Department at a tertiary hospital in Beijing. Previously, during a consultation, a patient claimed that he had consulted Dr. Li online about the treatment of rheumatism and received a response from Dr. Li stating that a certain medication and health product could treat rheumatic diseases with good results.
Dr. Li told reporters that answering patients' questions online is his daily job, but the content described by the patient about promoting health products is definitely not his own response.
Dr. Li asked the patient about the website's website address and found that the website not only used his name and avatar to answer the patient's questions, but also used the names and avatars of other doctors he was familiar with to answer the patient's questions, and the content was all about promoting health products.
Dr. Li, together with four other doctors who were falsely answering patient questions, filed a lawsuit against this website through lawyers.
After trial, the court found that the defendant's act of randomly grabbing information from the internet to answer patient questions did not constitute a reasonable use of information, and constituted an infringement of the name rights of several doctors.
Guo Sheng, Judge of the First Comprehensive Trial Division of Beijing Internet Court, said that in this case, the defendant used the plaintiff's name for commercial operations to obtain traffic value, which completely deviated from the scope of reasonable use stipulated in the Civil Code. Therefore, the court ultimately ruled that the defendant's behavior did not constitute reasonable use.
In addition, the court held that the content published on the website had an impact on the plaintiff's social evaluation and constituted a breach of the plaintiff's reputation. Finally, the court ruled that the defendant's actions infringed upon the plaintiff's right to name and reputation, and the defendant should bear corresponding legal responsibilities.
02
How to eliminate the "consultation trap"?
Lawyer: Cooperation between regulatory authorities and platforms is required
When the reporter was searching for content related to "hair loss" on a well-known search engine, multiple ad like links appeared, showing doctors answering questions from hospitals across the country. The reporter clicks on one of the links that displays "selected" content and redirects to a dialogue window. At this point, the dialogue object displayed on the page is a doctor from a tertiary hospital in Beijing. Later, when the reporter consulted with him, the doctor at the dialogue window changed to another avatar.
When the reporter asked more detailed questions, the website popped up a paid link, requesting personal information including phone number to be filled in. The reporter found that there is a significant price difference among multiple consultation platforms for answering the same question, ranging from tens to hundreds of yuan.
In the Detailed Rules for the Supervision of Internet Diagnosis and Treatment published in 2022, detailed provisions are made for the prescription review, privacy protection, diagnosis and treatment quality control and other social concerns in Internet diagnosis and treatment.
Lawyer Liu Manjiang believes that eliminating the "consultation trap" requires cooperation between regulatory authorities and relevant platforms. The health administrative department should strictly establish an administrative licensing system and improve the electronic registration system of local Internet medical institutions and practitioners.
Liu Manjiang said that for medical institutions, doctors and experts who plan to set up online consultation, the Internet health consultation and consultation platform should review their qualifications in strict accordance with relevant regulations. Once any illegal activities such as deceiving patients or selling counterfeit drugs are discovered, relevant online accounts should be promptly suspended and submitted to relevant departments for legal accountability.
