The Risks Of Telemedicine In Urban-Rural Areas: A Systematic Approach Of Romanian Legislation

The telemedicine has developed as an alternative of access to medical services for patients from rural areas, but for its benefits the current trend at global level is to expand telemedicine into urban areas. Main reasons for this approach are the small number of articles regarding the risks of telemedicine in Romanian and also the major obstacle to telemedicine adoption represented by the legal considerations. To analyse the effects of the legal regulations on the potential risks was the main objective. For this purpose, a three-step methodology was used to select from a database of 69 normative acts wich represent the entire Romanian legislation published between 2000–2019 regarding telemedicine. Using three exclusion criteria, were obtained 18 acts of interest which comprised regulations with implications on potential risks. The results of this study led to the identification of 14 categories of risk from areas like: legal framework, reimbursement, personnel, technological, liability, privacy of data etc. In conclusion, these can affect both patients regardless of the urban or rural residence environment and also the healthcare system. As a final recommendation to reduce the probability of occurrence of risks it is necessary to amend and complete the existent normative acts and issue new regulations only in the telemedicine domain.