Stephen A. Schuster of Westboro has always been quick to adopt new
technology. An email user since 1982, the 51-year-old CEO of Rainier
Communications, a technology public-relations firm in Westboro, started
using email 10 years ago to communicate with his physician, Dr. Bruce R.
Weinstein at UMass Memorial Medical Center — University Campus in
Worcester.
"At one point I had a really simple question to ask him,” Mr. Schuster
said. So he looked up his doctor's email address online. "I just shot
him an email. To try to get a doctor on a phone is really hard.”
Mr. Schuster's ease with sharing health information over email — he once
sent a photo of a mole — is still not the norm, both locally and
nationally. Concerns about privacy, timeliness of information, liability
and clinical appropriateness have hampered use of electronic
communication. But medical practices are now finding ways to adapt to
communication technologies and even move beyond traditional email to
Web-based shared medical records.
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