The Regulation of Telemedicine in Brazil and its Insertion in the City of São Paulo: Between the Fear of Covid-19 and the Benefits of a Smart City

Résumé

This article aims to collect data on the regulation of telemedicine in Brazil and its insertion in the city of São Paulo, with emphasis on the use of the e-SaúdeSP application, launched during the pandemic resulting from Covid-19.

To this do, it first outlines, in a propaedeutic way, the contours of the SUS – Brazilian Unified Health System, since its constitutional conception – its principles, foundations, objectives, financing and structuring; through its infraconstitutional regulation – which deals mainly with its structure, distribution of competencies and criteria for collection and distribution of its resources; until its current realisation of fact in the institutions and services that currently compose it. It then begins to expose the contingency of the SUS in the municipality of São Paulo – the population covered the relevant legislation, the governmental structure and the available resources. Subsequently, based on the regulation of the use of telemedicine in Brazilian legislation, which gained new contours from the publication of Law No. 13,989 of April 15, 2020, which dealt, on an emergency basis, with the use of telemedicine in Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic, the municipal legislation on the subject is presented, seeking to define the concept of telemedicine,  understand its operating mechanisms, its objectives, its usefulness and the legal framework that guaranteed its insertion in the Brazilian health system. It exposes the context that motivated its implementation, as well as how it has developed since then, with emphasis on the performance of the municipality in this harvest.

Finally, it verifies the use of the e-SaúdeSP application as a tool of the SUS in the city of São Paulo, considering the entire breadth of the health system of the municipality, which directly serves about 12.4 million people, and the need to expand practices related to an intelligent city, especially in the area of health.