COVID-19 and the Physician's Duty of Confidentiality

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a number of ethical and legal issues affecting the physicianpatient relationship in Taiwan, including the scope of the physician's duty of confidentiality. Because the personal health information of COVID-19 patients and suspected cases has been broadly used in different measures to combat the spread of the novel virus, many are alarmed that the perception of patient-physician confidentiality may be challenged. For example, even though physicians are required to report COVID cases or suspected cases to the authority and their confidentiality duty can be waived in accordance with the Communicable Disease Control Act, it remains unclear what type and amount of information can be disclosed to the authority and whether the disclosure can be further expanded during the pandemic. Additionally, when telemedicine/telehealth has been widely used for people in quarantine or for the general public to minimize the risk of COVID-19 transmission, it remains questionable whether the current confidentiality requirements is sufficient to cope with the privacy risks posed by the new technologies. To respond to the limited exploration of the physician's duty of confidentiality during the pandemic, current statues and regulations regarding the duty should be reevaluated. Additionally, confidentiality waivers and technical advices on the protection of patient's confidentiality during the pandemic should be clearly elaborated in the guidelines provided by the government.

Multifunctional carbon nanomaterials for diagnostic applications in infectious diseases and tumors.

Infectious diseases (such as Corona Virus Disease 2019) and tumors pose a tremendous challenge to global public health. Early diagnosis of infectious diseases and tumors can lead to effective control and early intervention of the patient's condition. Over the past few decades, carbon nanomaterials (CNs) have attracted widespread attention in different scientific disciplines. In the field of biomedicine, carbon nanotubes, graphene, carbon quantum dots and fullerenes have the ability of improving the accuracy of the diagnosis by the improvement of the diagnostic approaches. Therefore, this review highlights their applications in the diagnosis of infectious diseases and tumors over the past five years. Recent advances in the field of biosensing, bioimaging, and nucleic acid amplification by such CNs are introduced and discussed, emphasizing the importance of their unique properties in infectious disease and tumor diagnosis and the challenges and opportunities that exist for future clinical applications. Although the application of CNs in the diagnosis of several diseases is still at a beginning stage, biosensors, bioimaging technologies and nucleic acid amplification technologies built on CNs represent a new generation of promising diagnostic tools that further support their potential application in infectious disease and tumor diagnosis.