Borobudur Law and Society Journal

Telemedicine applications promise to bring government health services closer to citizens, but whether they deliver good governance depends on the legal framework that governs them. This article asks how Gustav Radbruch’s three values of law, justice, utility and legal certainty, assess SehatPedia, a Ministry of Health application for online consultation with doctors, as e-government in health services and as a means of good governance. It is normative legal research using statute and conceptual approaches, applied to Law No 17 of 2023 on Health, Government Regulation No 28 of 2024, Ministry of Health Regulation No 20 of 2019, the Personal Data Protection Law and the regulation on the electronic-based government system, with facts about the application drawn from public sources and user reviews. The analysis finds that e-government can widen access, transparency and efficiency, but that the application, as its users report it, falls short on each value: reported malfunctions and unanswered consultations weaken utility, dependence on a smartphone and connectivity risks excluding remote and vulnerable users, and the framework leaves certainty about provider qualifications, responsibility for remote diagnosis and patient data incomplete. The manuscript’s earlier legal basis, repealed in 2023, is corrected. SehatPedia can support good governance only with verifiable licence information, response-time standards, a data-protection impact assessment, an accessibility audit and a named supervisory authority.