CYIL vol. 14 (2023)

CYIL 14 (2023) TELEMEDICINE IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC AND THE CONVENTION … perspective (such as changes in the standard of proof or in the burden of proof allocation) but the crucial question will usually consist in the standard of care that we have already discussed above. Conclusion Telemedicine represents an important part of the future of health care. As such, it will soon need to be addressed in a more complex and direct way by the national lawmakers as well as the courts. Several important dilemmas will need to be resolved, including the question of who is allowed to provide remote health services and under what conditions, whether the standard of care can be modified for these services, what is the scope of information that need to be provided to the patient, and what (if any) specifics of legal liability there are. In the Czech Republic, telemedicine has only recently started to be introduced into law, finally finding its legal definition in the draft bill amendment of the Act on Health Services which also clarifies what types of health services it is legally safe to provide remotely. As a result, only a limited scope of telemedical services are safe to perform for providers that do not have the patient in their “physical” care. From the comparative perspective, the approach to telemedicine varies among jurisdictions, from very permissive Sweden to rather conservative stance on the standard of care took by, for example, some of the professional associations in the USA. The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, among other requirements, obligates the State Parties to take appropriate steps to achieve equitable access to health care, to ensure compliance with the standard of care, to protect the patient’s right to informed consent, and to provide fair compensation for harm. We are convinced that in order to improve – or at least preserve – the equitable accessibility of quality health care, it is necessary to allow for reasonable modifications of the standard of care so that in the assessment of permissibility of the use of telemedicine in particular cases, certain disadvantages of telemedicine might be outweighed by its benefits. Patients need to be informed about the remote nature of proposed medical services when this information is able to rationally alter their decision on informed consent. Regarding compensation for harm, there seems to be no need to alter the system of legal liability for medical malpractice in telemedicine, as the traditional principles are (at least in the current state of affairs) capable of granting fair compensation to the patients. Nevertheless, the aim of this paper is not to provide definite answers but rather to stress the questions that will need to be discussed broadly and intensively in the years to come. The more deeply they are analysed and the more widely they are debated in both the professional and general public, the higher are chances that telemedicine will find its way to everyday clinical practice with less problems and greater realisation of its possible benefits.

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