Does Rurality Redraw Health Rights? Digital Health, AI and Data Justice Across Territories

Céline Gauthier-Maxence () and Carine Milcent ()
Additional contact information
Céline Gauthier-Maxence: CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris
Carine Milcent: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Rural health inequalities are traditionally understood through physician shortages, geographical isolation, and limited access to healthcare services. This article argues that the digital transformation of healthcare requires a broader legal perspective. As telemedicine, health data infrastructures, and conversational artificial intelligence increasingly mediate access to care, territorial inequalities are shifting from physical distance to digital capabilities, data governance, and algorithmic visibility. Drawing on European health law, the GDPR, the AI Act, and the European Health Data Space (EHDS), the article develops the concept of digital legal geography of healthcare to explain how the effective exercise of health rights is increasingly shaped by digital infrastructures. It examines the impact of digital literacy, conversational AI, and health data governance on patient autonomy, equality, and accountability, and argues that contemporary health rights now encompass data capabilities, the practical ability to access, understand, manage, and challenge health data within digital ecosystems. The article further proposes data justice as a normative framework for assessing territorial fairness in digital healthcare and explores how blockchain-based audit trails and smart contracts may strengthen traceability, dynamic consent, and trustworthy governance without replacing existing legal institutions. It concludes that achieving equal healthcare across territories now requires governing not only the distribution of medical resources but also the digital infrastructures through which health rights are increasingly exercised.

Keywords: Digital Health Health Data Governance Data Justice Rural Healthcare Artificial Intelligence; Digital Health; Health Data Governance; Data Justice; Rural Healthcare; Artificial Intelligence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-07-10
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05687976v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05687976

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().