Telemedicine and experimental legal regimes in the field of healthcare: problems and prospects for implementation

Abstract

In connection with the adoption of Federal Law No. 258-FZ of July 31, 2020 “On experimental legal regimes in the field of digital innovation in the Russian Federation,” a number of initiatives have been developed to establish experimental legal regimes in the field of telemedicine. The idea of using digital technologies in medicine is certainly relevant. On the one hand, the prospect of remotely receiving medical services is practically in demand; on the other, the level of technology development currently allows for a significant expansion of their implementation. The need to turn to the institution of an experimental legal regime is due to the fact that the current legislation contains norms that seriously complicate the process of widespread dissemination of telemedicine services.The purpose of the study is to reveal the theoretical characteristics of the concept of telemedicine and its current state, to identify legal obstacles to its development, to conduct a comparative analysis of existing draft programs of experimental regimes, to assess the problems and prospects for the development of telemedicine technologies in modern Russian practice. The study is based on domestic and foreign scientific sources of both legal and medical nature, as well as current and projected legal acts in the field of medical services, digital technologies, and personal data protection. Formal-legal, comparative-legal, statistical, and prognostic methods are used. Several problems that require a conceptual solution, including the issue of the safety of personal data and the issue of responsibility for a medical error resulting from the use of artificial intelligence technology or a technical device have been identified. Both are unlikely to be completely resolved at the current level of legal regulation and technological development. This, however, only confirms the need to introduce appropriate experimental regimes in order to use the accumulated empirical material to find solutions to existing and abstractly predictable problems.