Maintaining Compliance While Healing at a Distance: Telehealth Services within the Frame of Turkish Data Protection Regime

Abstract

Telehealth enables equal, high-quality, and efficient provision of health services, but it also poses serious risks in the absence of a legal basis. Despite its increasing use and promising potential, there has been no specific legal framework for telehealth in Turkey until recently. A new by-law governing the procedures and principles of telehealth services has been introduced by the Ministry of Health. As repeatedly referred to in the regulation, the most important issue is the positioning of telehealth in the data protection context. This article, therefore, aims to map telehealth services within the frame of the Turkish data protection regime. In this regard, we show how the category of personal data and the purpose of the processing should be determined. Thereafter we argue how relevant actors should be identified and present the rights and obligations of these actors in the light of basic principles regarding data processing, security, and transfer.