Personal Data Protection Issues in the Realm of Telemedicine. Blockchain, Civil Liability and other Methods to Overcome Them.

Abstract

The subject of this article is the legal regulation of personal data protection in the field of medical care with the use of telemedicine technologies and digital healthcare. Its purpose is to identify and analyze the problems of personal data protection and to find ways to overcome them. The relevance of the work is due to the presence of a large number of leaks of personal data, gaps in regulation, and the lack of an effective system of norms aimed at preventing the compromise of patient information. The author examines the main aspects of regulating the procedure for working with the patient's consent to the processing of personal data. Much attention in the article is paid to blockchain technology, traditionally considered in the Russian legal literature only within the framework of the use of cryptocurrencies. The article also analyzes the issues of the application of civil liability measures for offenses in the field of personal data protection of recipients of telemedicine services.The author criticizes the unreasonably strict regulation of the procedure for obtaining the patient's consent to the processing of personal data by a medical organization, emphasizes the need to introduce a flexible form of consent. This will reduce the amount of information at risk of leakage. In addition, the idea of creating a mechanism for revoking the patient's consent to the processing of personal data and securing the patient's right to demand from the medical organization the termination of their processing is put forward. The paper points to the prospects for the use of blockchain in the field of telemedicine, including for the protection of personal data. A regulatory division of blockchain systems into centralized and decentralized ones is proposed, suggesting their different regulation in relation to the protection of confidential information. In addition, the article notes the lack of elaboration of the norms on civil liability for offenses in the field of working with personal data in telemedicine, it is proposed to tighten regulation in order to increase the level of protection of patients' rights.