Teleworking and Telemedicine in the Life Sciences Industry

Here at the Law Office of Vincent Miletti, Esq. and the home of the #UnusuallyMotivated movement, we take pride as a resilient and dependable legal services firm, providing such services in both a traditional and online, web-based environment. With mastered specialization in areas such as Employment and Labor Law, Intellectual Property (IP) (trademark, copyright, patent), Entertainment Law, and e-Commerce (Supply Chain, Distribution, Fulfillment, Standard Legal & Regulatory), we provide a range of legal services including, but not limited to traditional legal representation (litigation, mediation, arbitration, opinion letters, and advisory), non-litigated business legal representation and legal counsel, and unique, online legal services such as smart forms, mobile training, legal marketing, and development.

Still, here at Miletti Law®, we feel obligated to enlighten, educate, and create awareness, free of charge, about how these issues and many others affect our unusually motivated® readers and/or their businesses. Accordingly, to achieve this goal, we have committed ourselves to creating authoritative, trustworthy, & distinctive content. Usually, this content is featured as videos posted on our YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtvUryqkkMAJLwrLu2BBt6w and blogs that are published on our website WWW.MILETTILAW.COM. With that, the ball is in your court and you have an effortless obligation to subscribe to the channel and sign up for the Newsletter on the website, which encompasses the best way to ensure that you stay in the loop and feel the positive impact of the knowledge bombs that we drop here!

As the authoritative force in Employment Law, it only seemed right to introduce one of the many upcoming series in which we introduce a variety of topics that looks to educate and deliver in a manner that only Miletti Law® can. To that end, this is the last blog and conclusion of our series on “Life Sciences Industry Guide for Labor and Employment,” in which we have reviewed the basics and issues of concern to employers engaged within the life sciences industry. In Part XXII of the series and our blog titled “Life Sciences Industry Compliance with Administrative Regulations,” we provided insight into how life science employers should comply with state and federal regulations. Regarding these regulations, we mentioned that employers within the life sciences are also required to comply with federal agency guidelines from OSHA (Occupational Health and Safety Administration) and CDC (Center for Disease Control). We also asserted that among the most critical guidelines, employers must draft and review policies concerning procedures for responding to and monitoring infections in the workplace, health certifications for visitors and employees, and prevention of infection in the workplace.

As we concluded this series, we have hammered on the issues of teleworking and telemedicine, which have become increasingly common in this industry, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, in our blog titled “Teleworking and Telemedicine in the Life Sciences Industry” and part XXIII of this series.

Teleworking and Telemedicine in the Life Sciences Industry

On the one hand, even with the resumption of on-site business operations after COVID-19, unrestricted face-to-face interaction is likely to remain a norm for some time. Like in most other industries, workforce in the life sciences industry would be telecommunicating where practicable. This implies that while they should embrace teleworking and telecommuting for a while, life sciences industry employers must ensure that they have evolved with local, state, and federal guidelines and order by revising their remote work policies accordingly.

In our blog accessible at https://milettilaw.com/blog/f/the-basics-and-fundamentals-of-the-life-sciences-industry, we mentioned that as a highly-regulated field of life, the life sciences industry is marred with a dozen ethical issues and, consequently, significantly high in employee claims seeking to “blow the whistle” on allegedly unethical, criminal, and unlawful practices. Thus, employers must take proactive measures to ensure employees observe and adhere to ethical behavior while teleworking. Still, we also mentioned, in our blog accessible at https://milettilaw.com/blog/f/trade-secret-protection-restrictive-covenants-in-life-sciences, that life sciences industry is highly interconnected and, therefore, fosters outsourcing arrangements, joint ventures, and collaborations between facilities and organizations, which, consequently, imply that employees are in constant mobility. Accordingly, these organizations and companies must understand how to defend against trade secret theft claims and take the necessary precautions to protect their confidential information and trade secrets by complying with the Defend Trade Secrets Act (DTSA) and appropriate Uniform Trade Secrets Act of 1979 (UTSA) in their jurisdictions.

On the other hand, working remotely also implies that life sciences industry workforce will continue using advancing technologies of communication such as telemedicine platforms. Accordingly, pharmaceutical and healthcare industry employers must understand that employees who administer health services through telemedicine platforms are not exempt from workplace laws such as state and federal harassment and anti-discrimination regulations, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA).

This means that to avoid exposing themselves and employers to potential liabilities from clients, customers, and the public, employees providing healthcare services through telemedicine platforms must be provided with adequate and proper training on how to effectively and appropriately administer services through such platforms. As we mentioned in our blog accessible at https://milettilaw.com/blog/f/avoiding-liability-in-the-life-sciences-industry, the life sciences industry involves a lot to do with how medical devices, drugs, biotechnological products, and pharmaceuticals are developed, produced, distributed, and used. For this reason, any errors in administering patients with erroneous healthcare services or providing them with misleading information may expose employers and employees to liabilities.

With that, we have concluded our series on “Life Sciences Industry Guide for Labor and Employment.” We hope that as a life sciences employer, we have armed you with key information that puts you ahead of the game in the industry. As usual, we are just a call/email away if you need any legal advice or assistance.

As you strive to be an unusually motivated® reader, stay tuned for more legal guidance, training, and educating content. In the interim, if there are any questions, concerns, or comments, please let us know at the Contact Us page!

Always rising above the bar,

Isaac T.,

Legal Writer & Author.