--- title_en: "Technical Guide for the Construction of Telemedicine Information Systems (2014 Edition)" title_zh: "远程医疗信息系统建设技术指南（2014年版）" abbreviation: "Telemedicine System Technical Guide" hierarchy: "standard" issuing_body: "National Health and Family Planning Commission" adopted_date: 2014-11-01 effective_date: 2014-01-01 status: "effective" source_url: "https://www.nhc.gov.cn/" related_laws: ["csl", "internet-diagnosis-treatment-measures", "healthcare-institutions-cybersecurity-measures", "healthcare-institutions-data-security-pi-measures"] domains: ["health", "data-security"] url: https://datacompliancechina.com/laws/telemedicine-information-system-technical-guide/ summary: "Issued in November 2014 by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, this technical guide is the normative reference document for designing, procuring, deploying, and accepting telemedicine information systems in China. Across eleven parts it sets out the principles, goals and tasks of telemedicine-system construction; a needs analysis covering user, business, functional, information, technical and information-security requirements; a four-layer design architecture (system, function, information, technical); a standards-and-security chapter; and detailed build-out specifications for national- and provincial-level telemedicine service and resource supervision centres and for service stations down to the township/community level. For data compliance, the relevant material is the information-security needs analysis (Part 3.6) and the information-security construction chapter (Part 5.2), which require patient-privacy protection, integrity and confidentiality of data in transmission and storage, local and offsite backup, security-domain isolation between hospital intranets and the telemedicine extranet, and an MLPS-aligned security architecture spanning physical, network, host, application, and data security plus five management domains. The document is a large technical guide; the page below is a structured English summary rather than a verbatim translation." --- > **Source: Data Compliance China** — https://datacompliancechina.com/laws/telemedicine-information-system-technical-guide/ · English rendering and annotations by DCC; the Chinese original governs. Cite as: Data Compliance China, "Technical Guide for the Construction of Telemedicine Information Systems (2014 Edition)", https://datacompliancechina.com/laws/telemedicine-information-system-technical-guide/ > *DCC summary, not a translation.* The *Technical Guide for the Construction of Telemedicine Information Systems (2014 Edition)* is a large technical guide (eleven parts, with extensive hardware/configuration appendices). It is not reproduced verbatim. The structured summary below focuses on its architecture and on the data-exchange and security requirements that are relevant to data compliance. ## Status and purpose The Guide was issued in November 2014 by the National Health and Family Planning Commission (the predecessor of the National Health Commission). It is described in its own foreword as a **normative document guiding the construction of telemedicine information systems**, intended for reference in scheme design, engineering tendering, deployment and implementation, and project acceptance. It consolidates lessons from earlier telemedicine deployments and sets out the basic functions, technical architecture, and construction standards for national- and provincial-level telemedicine service-and-resource supervision centres and for telemedicine service stations at each administrative tier, as well as the relationship between telemedicine systems and regional health-information platforms at each level. ## Document structure (eleven parts) 1. **Overview** — background, domestic and international development, necessity and urgency, and an analysis of social and economic benefits. 2. **Principles, goals and tasks** — construction principles, construction goals, and construction tasks. 3. **Needs analysis** — user needs, business needs, functional needs, information needs, technical needs, and **information-security needs**. 4. **Design architecture** — system architecture, function architecture, information architecture, and technical architecture. 5. **Standards and security** — the standards-system framework and standards-conformance testing, and **information-security construction**. 6. **Infrastructure construction** — telemedicine-system hardware, software, data-centre equipment rooms, and communication and network systems. 7. **Service-station construction** — remote-consultation application terminals, dedicated remote-consultation rooms, remote intensive-care (ICU) systems, surgical-demonstration systems, multimedia teaching systems, and teaching-on-demand systems. 8. **System deployment models** — centralized model and distributed model. 9. **Operation and maintenance** — telemedicine operations responsibilities, data-centre maintenance management, service-process management norms, service-event handling, service-system support, service-resource information management, and routine operations-management services. 10. **Quality and supervision** — construction-quality management and operation-quality management. 11. **Appendices** — configuration specifications for national- and provincial-level telemedicine service-and-resource supervision centres and for provincial, municipal, county and township/community service stations. ## Architecture The Guide specifies a layered design comprising a **system architecture, function architecture, information architecture, and technical architecture**. Functionally, telemedicine is organized around remote consultation (申请端 application terminals and dedicated consultation rooms), remote intensive-care monitoring, surgical and multimedia teaching, and teaching-on-demand, connected through national- and provincial-level service-and-resource supervision centres to service stations down to the township/community level. Two deployment models are defined — a **centralized model** and a **distributed model** — and the document addresses the interface between telemedicine systems and the regional health-information platforms at each level. ## Information-security needs (Part 3.6) The needs analysis identifies information security as a core requirement and frames it around four concerns: 1. **Protection of patient information privacy.** Telemedicine information includes electronic medical records, health archives, consultation information, and imaging data — much of which contains personal basic information, medical history, and other private data, as well as experts' diagnostic conclusions. Leakage directly infringes patients' interests and harms the hospital's reputation, while tampering or loss in transmission/storage can corrupt consultation results and, in serious cases, cause medical accidents. The Guide therefore requires **integrity of information in transmission (detectable and recoverable)**, **confidentiality of data in transmission and storage**, **complete local data backup**, and **offsite backup of important data**. 2. **Protection of consulting institutions' internal information.** Because participating institutions must connect their internal intranet to the telemedicine extranet for limited, defined information exchange while preventing leakage of the bulk of intranet information, the Guide requires **security isolation and security-domain partitioning** between the hospital intranet and the Internet, with **firewalls, malicious-code protection, boundary-integrity protection, and intrusion detection** at the boundary. 3. **Security protection of business databases.** The large volume of consultation and teaching business data that must be retained for review, comparison, and continuous observation must be protected against attack, loss, damage, and leakage — requiring defence against network attacks and protection of core information assets at both the network layer and the business-system layer. 4. **Security-management systems.** The Guide flags the operational risks of weak management — virus propagation via internal networks or USB drives, abuse of privileges, unauthorized modification of configuration or data, and O&M errors — and calls for effective security-management measures. ## Information-security construction (Part 5.2) The security-construction chapter builds an MLPS-aligned (等级保护 / Multi-Level Protection Scheme) security architecture, referencing the former Ministry of Health's *Guiding Opinions on the Information-Security Multi-Level Protection Work of the Health Industry*, the national standard *Basic Requirements for Information-System Multi-Level Protection*, and the EMR-based hospital-information-platform security solution. The architecture spans **five technical domains** — physical security, network security, host security, application security, and data security — and **five management domains** — security-management systems, security-management organization, personnel security management, system-construction management, and system O&M management. Notable functional requirements include: - **Application security** — identity authentication (unique usernames; password complexity of at least three character types, length ≥ 8, periodic change; login-failure handling), with **two-factor authentication (USB key + password) or a PKI/CA-certificate scheme required for Grade-III systems**; access control (login, role-based, directory-level, and file-attribute controls); and application-level audit of usage behaviour. - **Host/system security** — disaster-recovery capability (referencing GB/T 20988-2007 on information-system disaster recovery, with response and event-handling plans and automatic resume of failed backup/recovery), identity authentication (encrypted storage of credentials, periodic password rotation, two-factor authentication for remote management), strict host access control (least privilege, separation of privileged-user duties, renaming/locking of default accounts, removal of stale accounts, sensitivity labelling of important resources), and security auditing covering operating-system and database users with protected audit processes and records. - **Network and boundary security** — security-domain partitioning and boundary isolation between intranet and Internet, with firewalls, malicious-code protection, boundary-integrity protection, and intrusion detection, plus defence of business databases against network attack. - **Data security and backup** — confidentiality and integrity of data in transmission and storage, local full backup, and offsite backup of important data, consistent with the privacy-protection objective that data destruction must not result in leakage of private information. ## Why this matters for data compliance For overseas vendors and hospital-IT integrators building or supplying telemedicine systems for the Chinese market, this Guide is the 2014-era reference that hospitals and provincial health authorities have used to specify telemedicine-system security in tenders and acceptance. Its data-relevant core — patient-privacy protection, integrity and confidentiality of data in transit and at rest, local-plus-offsite backup, intranet/extranet security-domain isolation, and an MLPS-aligned five-domain security architecture with two-factor authentication for Grade-III systems — has since been carried forward and tightened by the *Administrative Measures for Internet Diagnosis and Treatment*, the *Measures for Cybersecurity Management of Healthcare Institutions*, and the *Measures for Data Security and Personal Information Protection of Healthcare Institutions (Trial)*. The Guide remains a useful baseline for understanding the security expectations embedded in Chinese telemedicine infrastructure. --- — *Technical Guide for the Construction of Telemedicine Information Systems (2014 Edition)*, issued November 2014 by the National Health and Family Planning Commission. DCC structured summary of a large technical guide; not a verbatim translation. For the source document, see the [National Health Commission website](https://www.nhc.gov.cn/).