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Patients continue to find new ways of reaching their physicians.
In the past, patients and their health care providers developed relationships through the course of everyday affairs and across a wide variety of social exchanges. Although other methods of communicating were introduced into the medical context, telephones, pagers and voicemail all retained some connection to individual voices. Moreover, medical practitioners and patients alike never anticipated that these technologies would substitute for genuine personal interactions. This Article will discuss the rights and expectations of patients and physicians when they communicate electronically. Part II describes the historical context of electronic medical communication.