Remote Patient Monitoring in Viet Nam: What Healthcare Organizations Need to Know About Evidence, Regulation, and Implementation
POLICY & REGULATORY INSIGHTS
Remote Patient Monitoring in Viet Nam: What Healthcare Organizations Need to Know About Evidence, Regulation, and Implementation
Last reviewed: 24 September 2026
Remote patient monitoring can look deceptively simple. A patient measures blood pressure, blood glucose, oxygen saturation, heart rate, weight or another health parameter at home, the information reaches a healthcare team, and someone can respond if something appears abnormal. More sophisticated programs may combine connected devices, patient-reported information, automated alerts, clinical dashboards and algorithms designed to identify deterioration or support clinical decisions.
In practice, remote patient monitoring is much more than moving measurements from the clinic into the home. Its value depends on what happens after the data arrive. Who reviews them, and how quickly? What happens when a reading crosses a threshold? Who contacts the patient? When should treatment be adjusted? When should the patient attend a clinic or emergency department? What happens if an important alert is missed?
These questions are particularly important in Viet Nam because remote patient monitoring is not governed by one single legal category. Depending on how a program is designed and used, the relevant framework may involve remote medical examination and treatment, medical-device regulation, Artificial Intelligence regulation where applicable, personal-data protection, health-data management, cybersecurity, electronic medical records and health-insurance payment. The practical challenge is therefore not simply to determine whether a technology is “allowed”, but to understand how the complete clinical and digital pathway should be governed.
Remote patient monitoring is a care model, not simply a connected device
Remote patient monitoring can broadly be understood as the collection of health information from a patient outside a traditional healthcare setting, followed by transmission or availability of that information for monitoring, assessment or clinical management. The information may come from medical devices, consumer technologies, software, questionnaires or a combination of these tools.
Providing a patient with a connected device does not, by itself, create an effective remote-monitoring service. The clinical value comes from the pathway linking measurement to interpretation and, when necessary, action. A hospital can purchase excellent monitoring devices and still have a weak program if nobody is clearly responsible for reviewing the information. A relatively simple technology, by contrast, may support meaningful care when patient selection, measurement technique, clinical thresholds, staff responsibilities and escalation pathways are well designed.
This is consistent with the broader international direction in digital health. The World Health Organization recommends that digital interventions be considered not only in terms of potential benefits, but also harms, feasibility, acceptability, resource requirements and equity. It also emphasizes that digital interventions are not a substitute for functioning health systems.[21]
The evidence is promising, but remote monitoring is not one intervention
It is tempting to ask whether remote patient monitoring “works”. That question is too broad. Monitoring a person with heart failure is different from managing hypertension or diabetes, following a patient after surgery, or monitoring a person with chronic respiratory disease. The device, measurement frequency, clinical thresholds, response model and intended outcomes may all be different.
A 2024 systematic review in npj Digital Medicine examined remote patient monitoring during transitions from hospital to home and included 29 studies from 16 countries. The review reported favorable findings for patient safety and adherence and improvements in mobility and functional status, while findings for several other clinical and quality-of-life outcomes remained inconclusive. It also found downward trends in hospital admission or readmission, length of stay, outpatient visits and non-hospitalization costs, while highlighting the need for more implementation and economic research.[19]
A broader systematic review published in 2025 examined 116 randomized controlled trials involving device-based remote monitoring. Seventy-two percent of the included trials reported a decrease in at least some aspect of hospital service use. This does not mean that remote monitoring reduced hospital use by 72 percent. The review also showed that outcomes varied with technology, clinical support, integration into care and patient engagement, reinforcing an important point: the effectiveness of remote monitoring depends heavily on how the care model is designed.[20]
For healthcare organizations, the better question is therefore not simply whether remote monitoring has evidence. It is whether there is sufficiently relevant evidence for the specific condition, patient population, device, monitoring protocol and clinical response model being proposed.
Evidence should be assessed at more than one level
A remote-monitoring program can fail even when one component has good evidence. A clinically validated blood pressure monitor does not automatically validate the hypertension-management program built around it. Similarly, an accurate algorithm does not demonstrate that clinicians will respond appropriately to its alerts or that patients will experience better outcomes.
Healthcare organizations should look at several layers of evidence. Can the device measure what it claims to measure with acceptable accuracy and reliability? If software interprets those measurements or generates alerts, how well does that function perform? Does acting on the information improve outcomes that matter to patients? Finally, can the complete intervention operate safely and sustainably in the organization’s own clinical environment?
That final question is easy to underestimate. Evidence generated in a highly resourced health system with centralized virtual-care teams, mature interoperability and round-the-clock staffing may not transfer directly to a Vietnamese hospital or clinic with a different workforce model, technology infrastructure and patient population. Local implementation therefore needs its own evaluation rather than assuming that published evidence will automatically translate into local benefit.
In Viet Nam, remote patient monitoring is not a standalone regulatory category
Under the Vietnamese legal framework reviewed for this article, “remote patient monitoring” is not established as one standalone regulatory license or classification. What matters is what the service and technology actually do.
A platform that collects measurements so that a patient can view them may have a different regulatory profile from a system in which a physician reviews those measurements, assesses the patient's condition and makes treatment decisions. Likewise, software that simply transfers or displays information may raise different regulatory questions from software that interprets physiological information, identifies deterioration, generates clinically actionable alerts or makes patient-specific recommendations.
A remote-monitoring program can therefore sit across several regulatory domains at the same time. It may involve a healthcare service, one or more medical devices, software, personal and health data, cloud infrastructure and clinical records. Healthcare organizations and technology companies should map the complete pathway rather than looking for a single answer to the question, “Is remote patient monitoring regulated?”
When remote monitoring becomes remote medical examination or treatment
Viet Nam’s Law on Medical Examination and Treatment defines remote medical examination and treatment as medical examination or treatment performed without direct contact between the practitioner and patient through equipment and information technology. Article 80 requires remote medical examination and treatment to remain within the practitioner’s authorized professional scope. The practitioner remains responsible for diagnosis, treatment decisions and prescribing, while remote treatment must follow the list of diseases and conditions issued by the Minister of Health.[1]
This distinction matters for remote patient monitoring. Simply collecting or transmitting a home measurement does not automatically mean that every part of a remote-monitoring service constitutes remote medical examination or treatment. The analysis depends on how the information is actually used. Once remotely collected information is being used by a practitioner to assess a patient's condition, diagnose a problem, make a treatment decision, adjust therapy or prescribe medication, however, the organization should assess whether the activity falls within the statutory remote-care framework.
Decree No. 96/2023/NĐ-CP, read together with subsequent decentralization provisions, sets out conditions for healthcare facilities performing remote medical examination and treatment. These include an appropriate professional scope, sufficient practitioners and suitable technical infrastructure, information-technology equipment, specialized equipment and software. The system must also support secure transmission, display, processing and storage of information and provide data-retention and backup arrangements that comply with applicable law.[2]
Healthcare facilities performing remote medical examination and treatment are also subject to the applicable declaration procedure. Following Decree No. 148/2025/NĐ-CP, receipt of the declaration for facilities within the decentralized framework falls under the authority of the head of the specialized health agency under the provincial-level People’s Committee. The same Decree also decentralizes the decision on pilot remote medical examination and treatment outside the established disease list to that authority, subject to the applicable procedures.[3]
The disease list also matters
Circular No. 30/2023/TT-BYT, effective from 1 January 2024 and currently recorded as in force, establishes the list of diseases and conditions for remote medical examination and treatment. The list contains 50 entries and includes several areas particularly relevant to remote-care models, such as obesity, follow-up after surgery or procedures, hypertension, diabetes, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.[4]
This list should not be interpreted as meaning that collection of patient-generated health information is prohibited for every condition outside it. The regulatory question depends on what the activity actually constitutes. Where a service amounts to remote medical examination or treatment, however, the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment, Decree No. 96 and Circular No. 30 become directly relevant.
Decree No. 96 also provides a mechanism for healthcare facilities seeking to pilot remote medical examination and treatment for diseases or conditions outside the established list, with the relevant authority now decentralized under Decree No. 148/2025/NĐ-CP. Organizations developing new remote-care models should therefore determine the applicable pathway before clinical deployment rather than after patients have already been enrolled.
The device and the software should be assessed separately
Remote monitoring may involve blood pressure monitors, pulse oximeters, electrocardiographic devices, glucose-monitoring technologies, weighing devices, wearable sensors or other equipment. Whether a particular product is a medical device, and what regulatory requirements apply, depends on its intended purpose and the Vietnamese medical-device framework.
The current framework is principally based on Decree No. 98/2021/NĐ-CP, as amended and consolidated in Ministry of Health Consolidated Document No. 08/VBHN-BYT dated 6 March 2026. The statutory definition of a medical device expressly includes software where the applicable requirements and intended medical purposes are met.[5]
Classification is risk based. The current classification rules are reflected in Consolidated Document No. 12/2026/VBHN-TT-BYT dated 10 July 2026, incorporating Circular No. 05/2022/TT-BYT as amended by Circular No. 24/2026/TT-BYT. Under Rule 10, for example, an active diagnostic medical device used to monitor vital physiological parameters is Class C where changes in those parameters could place the patient in danger, including changes in cardiac, respiratory or central nervous system activity.[6]
There is an important software nuance. Article 3 of the current medical-device framework states that the provisions on classification, issuance of circulation numbers and declaration of eligibility for trading do not apply to software used for medical devices.[5] At the same time, software is expressly included within the medical-device definition when the statutory criteria are met. The wording should therefore not be simplified into either “all medical software follows the same pathway as physical medical devices” or “software is exempt from medical-device regulation.” The intended purpose, architecture, role and functionality of the particular software need to be examined carefully.
For a remote-monitoring program, the sensor, connected medical device, patient application, clinician dashboard and analytical module do not necessarily share one regulatory status. Foreign clearance or classification in the United States, European Union or another jurisdiction may provide useful supporting information, but it does not replace assessment under Vietnamese requirements. For a more detailed discussion, see our separate article, When Is Healthcare Software Considered a Medical Device in Viet Nam? What Healthcare Organizations and Technology Companies Need to Know.
Artificial Intelligence may add another regulatory layer
Some remote-monitoring systems use Artificial Intelligence to identify patterns, estimate patient risk, prioritize alerts or predict deterioration. Where a function meets the legal definition of an Artificial Intelligence system, healthcare organizations and technology companies also need to consider Viet Nam’s Law on Artificial Intelligence No. 134/2025/QH15, effective from 1 March 2026, and Decree No. 142/2026/NĐ-CP, effective from 1 May 2026. Under the Law, providers are responsible for classifying their systems before use, and systems classified as medium or high risk are subject to classification-documentation and notification requirements.[24,25]
One point deserves particular care. Under Decree No. 142/2026/NĐ-CP, high-risk systems are those included in the high-risk list issued by the Prime Minister. Decision No. 33/2026/QĐ-TTg, effective from 15 August 2026, currently has a relatively narrow healthcare section focused on Artificial Intelligence systems supporting surgery and robotic surgery. An algorithm used for remote monitoring, risk prediction or clinical alerting should therefore not be assumed to be high risk simply because it is used in healthcare. If it is not on the high-risk list, it still needs to be considered under the broader risk-classification framework, and its classification may depend on how it operates, interacts with users and is deployed.[25,26]
Medical-device regulation and Artificial Intelligence regulation also answer different questions. Depending on the system, both may apply in parallel. A software function could therefore require analysis of its intended medical purpose under the medical-device framework and, separately, classification and governance under the Artificial Intelligence framework. For a broader discussion, see our separate article, Viet Nam’s Law on Artificial Intelligence: What Healthcare Organizations Need to Know and Prepare For.
Regulatory authorization and clinical evidence answer different questions
Regulatory status and clinical evidence should not be treated as interchangeable. Appropriate registration, declaration or other regulatory status can establish that a product has satisfied applicable market requirements. It does not, by itself, demonstrate that using the product in a particular Vietnamese patient population will improve clinical outcomes.
The reverse is also true. Strong published studies do not remove the need to establish the appropriate Vietnamese regulatory pathway. Healthcare organizations should therefore conduct both regulatory due diligence and evidence review before changing clinical practice around a remote-monitoring technology.
This distinction is particularly important during procurement. The relevant questions are not only “Can we buy and use this technology?” but also “What evidence supports the proposed use, and is that evidence sufficiently applicable to our patients and our care model?”
Health data collected at home remain health data
Moving measurement outside the hospital does not make the information less sensitive. Remote-monitoring systems can accumulate longitudinal blood pressure, glucose, oxygen saturation, heart rate, symptoms, medications and other information, often linked to direct identifiers and sometimes combined with data from smartphones or connected devices.
Viet Nam’s Law on Personal Data Protection No. 91/2025/QH15 has been effective since 1 January 2026. Its provisions concerning health information require the consent of the data subject for collection and processing except where a statutory exception applies, and the wider requirements of personal-data protection law continue to apply. Decree No. 356/2025/NĐ-CP provides further implementation requirements.[7,8]
Remote-monitoring data can also fall within the broader health-data framework established by the Law on Data No. 60/2024/QH15 and Decree No. 102/2025/NĐ-CP on management of health data, both effective from 1 July 2025. Decree No. 102 regulates the management, development, protection, governance, processing and use of health data, together with the National Health Database and related responsibilities.[9,10]
For a healthcare organization, privacy due diligence should therefore go much further than asking whether a vendor has a privacy policy. The organization needs to understand what data are collected, why they are needed, the respective roles of the parties, who can access them, which subcontractors are involved, how long the information is retained, whether it may be used for secondary purposes and what happens to it when the service or contract ends.
Foreign cloud hosting needs to be understood before contracting
Many remote-monitoring platforms are cloud based, and an international vendor may use infrastructure outside Viet Nam without this being obvious to the clinical team.
Decree No. 356/2025/NĐ-CP expressly treats several situations as cross-border personal-data transfers, including moving personal data collected or stored in Viet Nam to servers outside Viet Nam, storing or processing such data through the cloud service of a foreign provider, and transferring information collected in Viet Nam to an overseas platform for further processing. The applicable impact-assessment and other compliance requirements, together with any relevant statutory exemptions, therefore need to be determined from the actual data architecture rather than from the vendor's headquarters or brand alone.[8]
The question is not simply whether a vendor says its cloud is “secure.” Before contracting, an organization should know where production data, backups, logs and disaster-recovery copies are located, which entities can access them, whether information is transferred onward to additional processors, and how access, encryption, retention and deletion are managed throughout the data lifecycle.
Cybersecurity can become a patient-safety issue
A remote-monitoring system creates a digital pathway between the patient and the healthcare organization. If that pathway fails, the consequences may extend beyond information security. An unavailable dashboard may delay recognition of deterioration, manipulated or incorrect information may affect clinical decisions, and compromised credentials may expose sensitive patient information.
Viet Nam’s Law on Cybersecurity No. 116/2025/QH15 has been effective since 1 July 2026. The regulatory framework was further developed in August 2026 through Decree No. 331/2026/NĐ-CP on cybersecurity protection for information systems and Decree No. 333/2026/NĐ-CP detailing provisions and measures for implementation of the Law on Cybersecurity, both effective from 19 August 2026. Decree No. 330/2026/NĐ-CP, also effective from 19 August 2026, establishes the administrative-sanctions framework for cybersecurity and personal-data protection.[12–15]
For a remote-monitoring program, this translates into practical questions about authentication, access control, encryption, device identity, vulnerability and patch management, application programming interface security, audit logging, vendor remote access, backup and recovery, incident response and business continuity. The depth of these controls should reflect the clinical consequences of a system failure, not simply the convenience of the technology.
Remote monitoring also needs a medical-record strategy
A common implementation problem is that remote-monitoring data remain inside a separate vendor dashboard. Clinicians may see hundreds of measurements there while the patient's formal medical record contains little evidence of what was reviewed, what was clinically significant or why treatment was changed.
Circular No. 13/2025/TT-BYT, effective from 21 July 2025, governs implementation of electronic medical records. Hospitals were required to implement electronic medical records by 30 September 2025. For other healthcare facilities, Article 4(2)(b) establishes a deadline of 31 December 2026 for the facilities described in that provision as having patients receiving inpatient, day and outpatient treatment.[11] The wording should not automatically be extended to every outpatient-only facility without considering the scope of the Circular.
For remote monitoring, this does not mean that every raw reading from every wearable or home device needs to be copied into the medical record. A more useful approach is to define which observations become clinically material, how relevant trends are summarized, how alerts and clinician interpretations are documented, and where medication changes, patient communications and escalation decisions are recorded. The goal should be a coherent clinical record, not simply a larger data repository.
More data do not automatically mean better care
Continuous monitoring can produce thousands of data points from a single patient. If every small variation generates an alert, the care team can quickly spend more time managing noise than identifying clinically meaningful change.
Alert design therefore needs to be treated as part of the clinical model. Thresholds should reflect the condition, patient population and intended intervention. The organization should define which alerts require urgent review, which can be reviewed during normal working hours, who is responsible for each category and what escalation pathway applies. After implementation, false positives, repeated alerts without clinical action, unresolved alerts and time to response should all be monitored as quality measures.
The objective is not to detect every possible variation. It is to identify information that can reasonably lead to timely and beneficial action.
“24/7 monitoring” is an operational commitment, not a software feature
A platform may receive information 24 hours a day, but that does not mean a healthcare professional is continuously watching the dashboard. This distinction needs to be clear to patients. Operating hours, expected response times, after-hours arrangements and emergency instructions should be defined before enrollment, and marketing language should describe the service actually being delivered rather than the technical capability of the platform.
Unless an organization has specifically designed and resourced an emergency-response service, remote patient monitoring should not be presented as a substitute for emergency care. Patients need to know which symptoms or situations require immediate medical attention rather than waiting for a device alert to be reviewed.
Patient selection and measurement quality matter
Not every patient with the same diagnosis needs the same intensity of monitoring. Inclusion and exclusion criteria should consider clinical risk, expected benefit, the patient's ability to use the technology and the support available at home.
This is particularly relevant in Viet Nam, where digital literacy, smartphone use, connectivity, living arrangements and family involvement can vary considerably. For some older patients, a family member or caregiver may be central to measurement, device management and communication with the healthcare team. Vietnamese-language instructions, telephone alternatives and simple workflows may be more valuable than adding another sophisticated feature to an application.
Measurement quality also changes when part of the care process moves into the home. An incorrect blood-pressure cuff size, poor positioning or the wrong measurement technique can produce misleading information. Other sensors may be affected by placement, movement, device condition or patient technique. Patient onboarding, competency checks, troubleshooting and periodic reassessment should therefore be treated as clinical quality activities rather than optional technical support. A poor-quality measurement transmitted perfectly to an elegant dashboard is still poor-quality clinical information.
Interoperability should be considered before scale
A small pilot can often operate with a standalone dashboard. The difficulty becomes much more obvious when hundreds or thousands of patients are enrolled and clinicians must move between an electronic medical record, a remote-monitoring platform, a messaging application and the hospital information system.
International evidence suggests that integration into clinical care is one of the factors that can influence the effectiveness of remote monitoring.[20] World Health Organization implementation guidance similarly emphasizes needs-based, interoperable digital systems aligned with wider health-system architecture rather than isolated technology deployments.[23]
Before scaling, an organization should know how patient identity is matched across systems, which information enters the clinical record, whether structured data can be exported, how interfaces are maintained and what happens if the vendor is changed. Data portability is particularly important. A service can become difficult and expensive to replace if years of patient information cannot be retrieved in a usable format.
Reimbursement is developing, but remote monitoring should not be built around assumptions
The current health-insurance framework includes remote medical examination and treatment and remote support within the scope of healthcare costs payable by the health-insurance fund, as reflected in Article 21 of the amended Law on Health Insurance and the 2026 consolidated version of that law.[16]
There are already specific payment provisions relevant to remote care. In particular, Article 14 of Circular No. 37/2024/TT-BYT, effective from 1 January 2025 and currently recorded as in force, provides rules for health-insurance payment for medicines used in remote medical examination and treatment, remote support and remote consultation, subject to the applicable conditions.[17]
A broader dedicated payment framework is still developing. As of 24 September 2026, the August 2026 draft Circular from the Ministry of Health concerning health-insurance payment for family medicine, home-based medical care, remote medical examination and treatment, and remote support remained publicly presented through the Government's policy-development portal as a draft under consultation. The draft proposes more detailed payment arrangements and an effective date of 1 January 2027. No final instrument replacing that draft status was identified in the official sources reviewed for this article as of the review date.[18]
Healthcare organizations should therefore not assume that every connected device, subscription, dashboard fee or clinician-monitoring activity will automatically be reimbursed by health insurance. The payment pathway needs to be verified for the particular clinical service and care model being designed.
Procurement should evaluate the care service, not only the technology
Traditional technology procurement often focuses on specifications, price, demonstrations and regulatory documentation. That is not enough for remote patient monitoring because the organization is effectively purchasing or building part of a clinical pathway.
Before adoption, a healthcare organization should understand the intended clinical use, target population, evidence base, Vietnamese regulatory status of relevant devices and software, software version, data architecture, interoperability, cybersecurity controls, hosting arrangements, technical support, uptime expectations, device replacement process, software-update process and responsibilities when incidents occur.
Contracts deserve the same level of attention. They should address access to data, portability when the contract ends, security incidents, service continuity and clinically significant software changes. If a vendor changes an algorithm, clinical threshold or alert logic after implementation, the healthcare organization should know what changed and determine whether the updated system requires additional validation before it is relied upon in patient care.
Technology companies, in turn, should be able to answer a simple but important question: What happens when the system detects something clinically important? A credible answer should explain what is measured, how measurement quality is assured, what the software does with the information, whether an algorithm is involved, who receives an alert, what response is expected, how quickly it should occur and how the response is documented.
Implementation should begin with a clearly defined clinical problem
A practical remote-monitoring program usually starts with a problem, not with a platform. The organization should first define the patient group and outcome it wants to improve, then determine what information needs to be collected and how frequently. Clinical thresholds, responsibilities, response times and escalation pathways can then be designed before the technology is selected.
A limited pilot should test much more than whether data successfully reach a dashboard. It should examine whether patients can use the system, whether measurements are reliable, whether the clinical team can manage the workload, how often alerts are generated, how many require meaningful action, whether significant events are missed, and whether the intervention improves the clinical or operational outcomes that justified the program in the first place. Scaling should follow evidence from the pilot, not simply the fact that the pilot was technically successful.
Success should be measured by outcomes, not connectivity
The number of enrolled patients, connected devices or transmitted measurements describes activity. It does not demonstrate healthcare value. Outcomes should reflect the clinical purpose of the program and, depending on the use case, may include disease control, earlier detection of deterioration, avoidable emergency visits, readmissions, treatment adherence, patient-reported outcomes, functional status or time to clinical intervention. Operational measures such as staff workload, alert volume, false alerts, technical failures, patient dropout and cost per successfully managed patient can be equally important.
Equity should also be monitored. A remote-monitoring model may perform well among digitally confident patients while systematically excluding people who could benefit but have limited connectivity, digital literacy, disability or insufficient support at home. A well-designed Digital Medicine program should consider these barriers from the beginning rather than discovering them only after implementation.
What good remote patient monitoring should look like in Viet Nam
The strongest remote-monitoring model for Viet Nam is unlikely to be the one with the largest number of devices, the most Artificial Intelligence or the greatest volume of continuous data. It is the model in which technology addresses a clearly defined clinical problem, evidence is appropriate to the intended use, regulatory responsibilities are understood, patient information is protected and clinicians can realistically act on the information they receive.
It should also fit the healthcare setting in which it is deployed. A tertiary hospital following high-risk patients after discharge may need a very different model from a specialty clinic managing hypertension or diabetes. Workforce capacity, patient population, clinical risk, digital infrastructure and the role of families and caregivers should shape the design.
As Digital Medicine develops in Viet Nam, remote patient monitoring has genuine potential to extend care beyond the walls of healthcare facilities and support more continuous management of chronic disease, recovery and selected higher-risk patients. But its value will not come from connecting more people to more devices. It will come from building reliable clinical systems around those connections.
The central question is therefore not simply “Can we collect this patient’s data remotely?” It is “If we collect this information, can we use it safely, lawfully and effectively to improve the patient’s care?” That is the point at which remote monitoring becomes meaningful Digital Medicine.
References and further reading
National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Medical Examination and Treatment No. 15/2023/QH15, particularly Articles 2 and 80 concerning remote medical examination and treatment.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 96/2023/NĐ-CP detailing provisions of the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment, particularly Articles 87 and 88 concerning remote medical examination and treatment and remote support, read together with subsequent decentralization provisions.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 148/2025/NĐ-CP on decentralization and delegation of authority in the health sector, particularly Articles 17 and 18 concerning remote medical examination and treatment procedures.
Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Circular No. 30/2023/TT-BYT promulgating the list of diseases and conditions for remote medical examination and treatment. Effective 1 January 2024.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 98/2021/NĐ-CP on medical-device management, as amended. See Ministry of Health Consolidated Document No. 08/VBHN-BYT dated 6 March 2026.
Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Circular No. 05/2022/TT-BYT, as amended by Circular No. 24/2026/TT-BYT. See Consolidated Document No. 12/2026/VBHN-TT-BYT dated 10 July 2026.
National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Personal Data Protection No. 91/2025/QH15. Effective 1 January 2026.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 356/2025/NĐ-CP detailing provisions and measures for implementation of the Law on Personal Data Protection. Effective 1 January 2026.
National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Data No. 60/2024/QH15. Effective 1 July 2025.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 102/2025/NĐ-CP on Management of Health Data. Effective 1 July 2025.
Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Circular No. 13/2025/TT-BYT providing guidance on implementation of electronic medical records. Effective 21 July 2025.
National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Cybersecurity No. 116/2025/QH15. Effective 1 July 2026.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 331/2026/NĐ-CP on Cybersecurity Protection for Information Systems. Effective 19 August 2026.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 333/2026/NĐ-CP detailing provisions and measures for implementation of the Law on Cybersecurity. Effective 19 August 2026.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 330/2026/NĐ-CP on administrative sanctions in cybersecurity and personal-data protection. Effective 19 August 2026.
National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Health Insurance No. 25/2008/QH12, as amended, including amendments under Law No. 51/2024/QH15 and subsequent legislation. See Consolidated Document No. 40/VBHN-VPQH dated 16 March 2026.
Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Circular No. 37/2024/TT-BYT, particularly Article 14 concerning health-insurance payment for medicines used in remote medical examination and treatment, remote support and remote consultation. Effective 1 January 2025.
Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Draft Circular on health-insurance payment for family medicine, home-based medical care, remote medical examination and treatment, and remote support. Public consultation version published in August 2026. Draft instrument as of this review.
Tan SY, Sumner J, Wang Y, Yip AW. A systematic review of the impacts of remote patient monitoring interventions on safety, adherence, quality-of-life and cost-related outcomes. npj Digital Medicine. 2024;7:192.
Jansen AJS, Peters GM, Kooij L, et al. Device based monitoring in digital care and its impact on hospital service use. npj Digital Medicine. 2025;8:16.
World Health Organization. WHO Guideline: Recommendations on Digital Interventions for Health System Strengthening. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2019.
World Health Organization. Global Strategy on Digital Health 2020–2027. Updated 2025 following the World Health Assembly decision extending the strategy through 2027.
World Health Organization. Digital Implementation Investment Guide: Integrating Digital Interventions into Health Programmes. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2020.
National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Artificial Intelligence No. 134/2025/QH15. Effective 1 March 2026.
Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 142/2026/NĐ-CP detailing provisions and measures for implementation of the Law on Artificial Intelligence. Effective 1 May 2026.
Prime Minister of Viet Nam. Decision No. 33/2026/QĐ-TTg promulgating the List of High-Risk Artificial Intelligence Systems. Effective 15 August 2026.
Regulatory and educational note
This article provides a general overview of remote patient monitoring in Viet Nam as of 24 September 2026. “Remote patient monitoring” is not, by itself, a standalone regulatory classification under Vietnamese law. Applicable requirements depend on the functions being performed, how information is used, whether the activity constitutes medical examination or treatment, the status and intended purpose of the devices and software involved, whether Artificial Intelligence is used, and how personal and health data are processed.
An activity that only collects, transfers or displays information should therefore not automatically be treated as equivalent to remote medical treatment. Conversely, calling a service “monitoring”, “wellness” or “care coordination” does not remove healthcare-service obligations where its actual use amounts to medical examination or treatment. Product-specific and service-specific assessment remains important.
Where Artificial Intelligence is involved, the presence of a healthcare use case also does not, by itself, mean that the system falls within the current high-risk Artificial Intelligence list. The system should be classified according to its actual functionality and the applicable Artificial Intelligence framework, while any separate medical-device implications should also be assessed.
The health-insurance section distinguishes between provisions already in force, including the statutory inclusion of remote care within health-insurance benefits and existing rules concerning medicines used in remote care, and the broader August 2026 draft payment framework for family medicine, home-based and remote medical care. Organizations should verify the final rules applicable at the time a reimbursement model is implemented.
This article is for educational purposes and does not constitute legal, regulatory or clinical advice.