A session titled Digital Transformation of Russian Healthcare: Evolving Roles, Data, and the Future of Medicine took place on the first day of the 16th Russian Internet Governance Forum.

The discussion featured Kirill Arzamasov, Head of Research at the Science and Practice Center for Diagnostics and Telemedicine (Moscow Health Department); Boris Zingerman, CEO of the National Database of Medical Knowledge association; Alexey Kushner, Head of Product Development at NtechLab; Andrei Povarenkin, Development Director at Third Opinion; and Angela Todorovic, Founder of Hatta AI. Vadim Glushchenko, Director of the Center for Global IT Cooperation, moderated the session.

Opening the discussion, Vadim Glushchenko noted that healthcare is a key area that affects every one of us.

“Today in Russia, approximately 87 percent of patients schedule doctor appointments online, while advanced practices like AI and telemedicine are seeing explosive growth. Over four years, this figure has grown 7.5-fold to reach 3 million,” he said.

Experts discussed how digital technologies help patients access convenient, high-tech medical services, as well as the ways they are transforming medical practice. They also examined how well implementation is working, the risks of AI errors in clinical settings, and issues around regulation and security of medical data flows.

The participants noted that technologies have already been integrated into clinical processes and are changing the very logic of medicine. Moreover, the key benefit lies not in any single tool, but in the integration of various solutions – without that, even precise algorithms are ineffective. Special attention was paid to data: the effectiveness of AI depends directly on its quality, accessibility, and connectivity between systems, which remains a major limitation.

Attitudes toward medical expertise are also shifting, with patients increasingly relying on digital services and AI, which raises the bar for solution quality and reinforces the physician’s role as the final expert.

In international practice, the development of medical AI is accompanied by strict regulations and requirements for algorithm transparency. Key challenges include access to data and the need to build trust in the technology.

“Artificial intelligence in medicine is no longer a question of the future, but a question of how exactly we are implementing it. It doesn’t replace doctors; rather, it becomes a fully-fledged tool. And the quality of the entire healthcare system depends on how efficiently we build this connection,” Vadim Glushchenko concluded.