Legal Issues in E-Healthcare Systems - E-Healthcare Systems and Wireless Communications - page 36

of various e-health services may face grievances
more often than offline health users. Therefore,
additional protection in place will create trust
and confidence in dealing with the e-dossier. In
traditional physician and patient relationship, the
relationship is limited within geographical area
along with licensed physicians and pharmacist.
Malpractices in healthcare are rooted from physi-
cal contact, communication and prescription. With
the emergence of e-health the issue of proximity
or geography gets narrower and traditional rela-
tionship is declining. It is not necessary that the
healthcare practitioners and the patients need to
have face to face contact. The relationship now is
of “click-loyalty” where parties may not have seen
each other and they only used the technologies
for the communications and treatments (Nicolas,
2000). Thus additional information like disclosure
of place of business, full address, types of business,
telephone and fax numbers, company registration
number are very important so that the patients
would be able to search on genuineness of the
existence of the company and other information.
The laws of the countries should be amended in
making these requirements as compulsory. They
also must include a provision that such disclosure
cannot be waived by express agreement by the
parties.

Just as the definition of writing is extended
to online and digital documents, signature also
was broadened to include “digital signature”. In
Re a Debtor (No.2021 of 1995), it was held that
a faxed copy of a signature satisfied a relevant
statutory signature requirement. The judge sug-
gested that if the signature was digitalised and
later appended to the fax, the document should
be regarded as signed.
The UNCITRAL Model Law also validates the
use of digital signature. It prescribes that “where it
requires a signature of a person, that requirement
is met in relation to a data message if:

A. Method is used to identify that a person
and to indicate that person's approval of the
information contained in the data message;
and
B. That method is as reliable as was appropriate
for the purpose for which the data message
was generated or communicated, in the
light of all the circumstance, including any
relevant agreement” (UNCITRAL Model
Law 1996, Article 6(1)).

The digital signature is created and verified
by cryptography, a branch of applied mathemat-
ics which transforms messages into seemingly
unintelligible forms and back again. Under the
Malaysian Digital Signature Act 1997, the digital
signature uses public key cryptography which
employs an algorithm using two different but
mathematically related keys; one for creating a
digital signature or transforming data into a seem-
ingly unintelligible form, another key for verifying
a digital signature or returning the message to its
original form. The private key is known only to
the signer and the public key is normally widely
known and is used by a relying party to verify
the signer's digital signature. The law requires
the private key holder to take reasonable care
in handling the private key as the Certification
Authority will not be responsible for any misuse
of private key (Sarabdeen, 2001). As the key con-

Digital Signature

Other issues of electronic contracts entail valid-
ity of “digital signature” and authentication of
contracting parties. A signature is the writing of
some name or identifying mark on a document.
However, a digital signature is not a signature
but a process that uses encryption and algorithms
to encode a document (US Uniform Computer
Information Act, 1999, section 201(a) (6)). The
process creates a product that identifies the per-
son who uses the process. As the person using
that particular process is only one or his agent,
the other party can safely rely on that process or
digital signature.