Legal Aspects of the Use Artificial Intelligence in Telemedicine

Abstract

Objective: the rapid expansion of the use of telemedicine in clinical practice and the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence has raised many privacy issues and concerns among legal scholars. Due to the sensitive nature of the data involved particular attention should be paid to the legal aspects of those systems. This article aimed to explore the legal implication of the use of Artificial Intelligence in the field of telemedicine, especially when continuous learning and automated decision-making systems are involved; in fact, providing personalized medicine through continuous learning systems may represent an additional risk. Particular attention is paid to vulnerable groups, such as children, the elderly, and severely ill patients, due to both the digital divide and the difficulty of expressing free consent.Methods: comparative and formal legal methods allowed to analyze current regulation of the Artificial Intelligence and set up its correlations with the regulation on telemedicine, GDPR and others.Results: legal implications of the use of Artificial Intelligence in telemedicine, especially when continuous learning and automated decision-making systems are involved were explored; author concluded that providing personalized medicine through continuous learning systems may represent an additional risk and offered the ways to minimize it. Author also focused on the issues of informed consent of vulnerable groups (children, elderly, severely ill patients).Scientific novelty: existing risks and issues that are arising from the use of Artificial Intelligence in telemedicine with particular attention to continuous learning systems are explored.Practical significance: results achieved in this paper can be used for lawmaking process in the sphere of use of Artificial Intelligence in telemedicine and as base for future research in this area as well as contribute to limited literature on the topic.