Legal Aspects of Telemedicine

Although distance medicine has been actively developing worldwide over the past 20 years, no universal mechanism of legislation has been developed across foreign countries to achieve main goals of tele-health services: convenience, effectiveness, and accessibility. The need to improve states’ healthcare systems has increased after dealing with the challenges that the world faced in 2020. While organizing the fight against the spread of the coronavirus infection, a number of countries invoked telemedicine technologies. The experience of using e-health in difficult epidemiological situations should be perceived by states as positive and thus incorporated when preparing legislative changes aimed at improving the regulation of telemedicine. States should act jointly in relation to the development of remote medical care technologies. This will help to build up experience and knowledge that can be used in the future when transforming telemedical assistance into cross-border practice, including the adoption of international acts. Telemedicine should be regulated comprehensively, instigating legal regulations for such issues as medical care provision, digital technologies, medical insurance aspects, licensing, and the protection of personal data. As for theRussian Federation, the remote medicine care model implemented in the country is incomplete due to the inability to diagnose diseases remotely. Such a restriction entails the appearance of a number of questions in other areas: the responsibility of the doctor, the possibilities of cross-border medicine, or insurance compensation issues. The purpose of the article is to describe the legal regulation of telemedicine technologies in theRussian Federation, comparing Russian regulation with American experiences, and analyzing the main approaches taken by foreign researchers.