Images of Illness—Sharing Patient Photographs in a Pandemic

Best Practices for Sharing Images in Clinical Care, Research, and Education—Protecting Patient Privacy

“…Dermatologic care, research, and education rely on presenting clinical images, case histories, videos, quotations, and other identifiable information to discuss cases with colleagues. The ethical boundaries of patient privacy and patient-physician trust are tested because traditional patient protection has not evolved in parallel or at the same pace as the rapid expansion of online educational conferences, discussion groups, social media, and even machine learning, which enable the dissemination of identifiable information on a much larger scale as well as for secondary uses . This Editorial explores the current standards for protecting privacy rights of patients and research participants, and highlights gaps in these standards where lapses and common secondary usages of private patient information may occur .…”