A good summary of the issues in asynchronous health care communications (AHCC) are presented in this paper from a patient and a provider point of view, with a focus on electronic communication. For example, surveys are quoted that show that patients would particularly like to avoid having to schedule appointments to ask simple questions they forgot to ask during doctor visits. Physicians, however, have not been rapidly seeking out email for patient communication because of their concerns about the volume of email they might receive, the need to protect patient privacy, and concerns about how to deliver bad medical news or sensitive data.

Finally, there are concerns about liability and licensing issues that medical professionals uniquely face when practicing online which need, in some cases, new laws that recognize this way of delivering medical care. The author points out that security concerns should at least be alleviated by an understanding by the medical profession of the vast sums of money moved safely and routinely electronically, the techniques of which should be able to be applied to patient data. The benefits of electronic communication for patient understanding of a diagnosis and compliance with a treatment regimen (for example, a professional being able to send an annotated medical image to the patient for his or her review) is believed to be one of the key advantages, and the article concludes with some general suggestions regarding how to incorporate good features into future online healthcare delivery systems.