Abstract

In recent years, exogenous shocks and cuts in public funding affected the ability to provide health services of adequate quality: an increase in the need for clinical work has combined with a chronic understaffing of medical personnel to generate a critical crisis. Telemedicine has emerged as a potential solution, as it allows saving professional work and preserving quality. Telemedicine is not a new set of practices, but recent advancements in information technology and management – such as the introduction of big data analysis and viable artificial intelligence techniques – have generated a debate on many operational and ethical questions. This book explores the transformations that a widespread use of telemedicine can generate in the relationships between the affected subjects – doctors, patients, other health professionals – and between human and artificial agents at the dawn of Artificial Intelligence.