Regulação da telemedicina no Brasil: desdobramentos jurídico-legais relacionados à responsabilidade civil médica

Abstract

The present work aims to deal with issues concerning civil liability in the context of telemedicine, which consists of the practice of medicine through digital, information, and communication technologies. This way of providing medical services, which has been increasingly consolidated in the country, has advantages and risks, which deserve to be analyzed from the perspective of civil liability. As a methodology, the research, of an exploratory nature, used deductive and qualitative methods, based on documental, bibliographical, jurisprudential sources and scientific articles on the matter. In this way, it was possible to trace the legal evolution on the matter to the current scenario of standardization of this type of service in the Brazilian legal system. From the study of the nature of the doctorpatient relationship, the systematic incidence from the Consumer Defense Code is evident, as it is a consumer relationship. So, it appears that, with the recognition of the condition of patientconsumer vulnerability, a more incisive legal protection is demanded for them in the examination of medical civil liability. The possible deepening of the probative difficulty is also investigated, which increases the importance of the medical record, also requiring the analysis of the distribution of the burden of proof for the parties involved. Furthermore, the primacy of informed consent is noted for this type of medical care, whose non-compliance may give rise to the duty to indemnify. In addition, there is a need for proper protection of patient data, as an assumption of maintaining medical secrecy, as well as its consequences for civil liability in telemedicine, based on the study of the discipline established in the General Data Protection Law.