Legal Status of the Telemedicine in a Comparative Perspective: Quo Vadis?

The global shift towards a new paradigm of electronic healthcare, which involves the comprehensive use of information and communication technologies, highlights the development of legal issues related to this process from a comparative perspective. In the article, a comparative analysis is presented of the regulatory status of telemedicine assistance in foreign countries and Russia, including the legal concept and content of telemedical activities, their goals, the specifics of voluntary informed patient consent for telemedical assistance, and the protection of telemedical data. Based on the conducted analysis, it became possible to propose scenarios for the further development of legal regulation of telemedicine within the domestic legal system. Specific proposals for improving legislation include highlighting and establishing the concept of “case teleconference” to denote interactions within the “doctor–doctor” system, establishing the possibility in certain cases to make a diagnosis without mandatory in‑person examination, extending the validity of the institute of withdrawing consent for personal data processing to telemedicine, emphasizing the need to supplement information about the features of telemedical care in the patient’s voluntary informed consent, and establishing an algorithm for assessing the quality of telemedical care based on formal, medical, and technical criteria.