Does Rurality Redraw Health Rights? Digital Health, AI and Data Justice Across Territories

Rural health inequalities are traditionally understood through physician shortages, geographical isolation, and limited access to healthcare services. This article argues that the digital transformation of healthcare requires a broader legal perspective. As telemedicine, health data infrastructures, and conversational artificial intelligence increasingly mediate access to care, territorial inequalities are shifting from physical distance to digital capabilities, data governance, and algorithmic visibility. Drawing on European health law, the GDPR, the AI Act, and the European Health Data Space (EHDS), the article develops the concept of digital legal geography of healthcare to explain how the effective exercise of health rights is increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures. It examines the impact of digital literacy, conversational AI, and health data governance on patient autonomy, equality, and accountability, and argues that contemporary health rights now encompass data capabilities, the practical ability to access, understand, manage, and challenge health data within digital ecosystems. The article further proposes data justice as a normative framework for assessing territorial fairness in digital healthcare and explores how blockchain-based audit trails and smart contracts may strengthen traceability, dynamic consent, and trustworthy governance without replacing existing legal institutions. It concludes that achieving equal healthcare across territories now requires governing not only the distribution of medical resources but also the digital infrastructures through which health rights are increasingly exercised.