Russia: Telemedicine is not for everyone

Participants in the promising new online market face severe restrictions in the provision of remote medical services. The Telemedicine Act entered into force on January 1, 2018, allowing in principle for the provision of medical care through remote consultation and monitoring. However, the mechanism for the remote provision of medical services has not been fully implemented due to a number of pitfalls in the regulations.

Participants in the online medicine market have already faced severe restrictions in the provision of services. The National Telemedicine Association (NTMA) has asked the Ministry of Health to clarify some items of the Ministry’s order on the procedure for the provision of medical care using telemedicine technologies.

In response to the NTMA’s letter, the Ministry of Health explained that online care services are part of the work of doctors. In this regard, all medical care should be carried out in a room equiped for consultations. The doctor must also have a permit for each referral for telemedicine consultations.

“In other words, the telemedicine services are possible only in the licensed premises of the clinic,” — said the NTMA Chairman of the Board Ivan Kartovitski. He believes that the procedure could increase costs due to the fact that doctors will not work directly with patients, but through medical institutions.

Mikhail Varyushin, Head of Corporate and Medical Legal Practice at the law firm Aronov and Partners, believes that doctors will be able to provide services at home.

The Ministry of Health also confirmed that companies are required to use the unified identification and authentication system when providing paid medical services, although the services may provide anonymous remote services. That is, anonymity will be respected at the doctor-patient level, but not at the clinic-patient or provider-patient levels, explained Kartovitski.

“From the regulator’s response, we see the lack of a differentiated approach in the issue of user identification,” said MMT General Director Denis Yudchits. According to Ivan Kartovitski, normative laws regulating the activity of telemedical organizations are constantly updated, complementing each other.

It is difficult for companies to understand how they should work, and they are trying to adapt to existing norms, he said. Mr. Kartovitski concludes that the excessively rigid barriers reduce the attractiveness of the market for business. The Ministry of Health only reported that in 2018,”it is planned to polish the activities of telemedicine systems.”

Translated from RoskomSvoboda: https://roskomsvoboda.org/38853/

Russia: Kalmykia hosts the International Oirat Festival for the first time

Kalmykia hosts the International Oirat Festival for the first time

May 15, 2018

The program of the festival included business meetings, scientific, practical, and academic conferences, wrestling competitions, archery, horse racing, ethnic costume competitions, tents, and creative competitions and performances.

On Saturday the beginning of the International Oirat Festival was celebrated with a colorful ceremony of offering flowers to the Buddha at the main Buddhist temple of Kalmykia. Delegations from Russian regions and guests from Mongolia and China were presented at the festival with products of traditional crafts, samples of musical culture, measures of strength in national sports, and more.

This was the 10th International Oirat Festival, and the first to be held in Kalmykia. The festival was attended by guests from Mongolia, China, Altai, Tuva, Buryatia, Yakutia. The Oirat peoples are a variety of Mongols, who live mainly in Russia, Mongolia and China. One Oirat sub-ethnicity, the Zungars, once had an independent state in what is now Xinjiang, China; however they were defeated by the Qing dynasty and genocidally exterminated.

The main events of the festival were held on the territory of the Shatta ecological park in Tselinny district. The festival opened with a theatrical prologue telling about the history of the Oirat-Kalmyk people. It was be attended by about one thousand artists. In the evening there was an open-air concert “Night in Khoton”, which featured a bike show and a performance of the famous Mongolian folk group “Altai”.

The International Oirate Festival was first held in Western Mongolia in 2006. In 2016 the initiative to hold the festival in Kalmykia was made by the Chairman of the public organizations of Mongolia “Oirad Tumen” Jalav Batsukh, this idea was supported by the head of Kalmykia Alexei Orlov.

Article based on content from TASS