Development of a Cellphone Stewardship Framework: Legal, Regulatory, and Ethical Issues

Introduction: Use of mobile devices within the health care sector has become commonplace in most developed countries, and increasingly common in developing countries. Such technological innovations have outpaced the necessary awareness and understanding of the spectrum of issues that ensure appropriate use of these innovations. The term stewardship has been defined and is applied to the appropriate care and use of cellphones by health care providers. Aim: To examine cellphone stewardship issues, and develop a simple framework by which to categorize these issues, using clinical WhatsApp(R) (WhatsApp Inc., Menlo Park, CA) use as the exemplar. Methods: Nine electronic databases were searched (January 2019) for articles on WhatsApp in clinical service. Inclusion criteria were article was in English, reported on WhatsApp use or potential use in clinical practice, and identified cellphone stewardship issues. Results: Of 590 articles related to WhatsApp use in clinical practice, 167 potentially addressed some form of stewardship issue. After further review of full-text articles, 13 met the inclusion criteria, addressing specific issues related to cellphone stewardship, as defined. Articles were from nine countries (six developing and seven developed economies). Cellphone stewardship issues were abstracted and categorized into legal, regulatory, and ethical aspects, leading to development of the Cellphone Stewardship Framework for Health Care Providers (CSF-HCP). Conclusion: The CSF-HCP facilitates informed and structured debate around this topic, and encourages application of the term cellphone stewardship to describe and encompass the diverse legal, regulatory, and ethical issues requiring debate, resolution, and routine practice to ensure appropriate use of cellphones, and other mobile devices, by health care practitioners.

Automated summary

This study examines cellphone stewardship issues and develops a simple framework for categorizing these issues, using clinical WhatsApp use as an example. Through searching and screening relevant articles, a Cellphone Stewardship Framework for Health Care Providers was developed to facilitate informed and structured debate on the legal, regulatory, and ethical aspects of cellphone use in healthcare.