Legal Status of Telemedicine in the Internal Market

Abstract:

Health services enjoy freedom of movement within the European Union (EU). This freedom also applies to information society services (ISS).

This article presents a legal framework within which it is possible to provide qualifying health services with the help of information and telecommunications technology (ICT) as ISS. Due to the ambiguity of EU regulation, the problem regarding how to determine whether a particular medical service corresponds to favourable structural ISS conditions is considered.

Since telemedicine makes a wide application of electronic devices possible, a new element appears in the relationship between physicians and their patients. Therefore, using electronic devices may cause numerous doubts regarding the normative status of these devices, since they modify the physician’s responsibility and affect the scope of his duty with regard to information. At the same time, the complexity of functional elements (actions) necessary to provide health services using ICT can, in some cases, prevent them from being recognised as ISS.