Right to medical confidentiality Sample Clauses

Right to medical confidentiality. The provision of healthcare has traditionally been shaped by the patient-doctor relationship and the resulting protection of the patient’s data. Patient data may cover any kind of information about individuals related to their past, current or future health or illness. What distinguishes the scope of protection of health data in general from the scope of protection of health data that is being processed in the medical context, is, that the latter enjoys the additional protection of confidentiality legislation besides privacy and data protection legislation. In other words, the processing of health data outside the medical context is subject to the fundamental right to privacy and the right to protection of personal data, whereas the processing of health data in the medical matters enjoys the right to medical secrecy as well. The doctor-patient relationship is characterized by a special relationship of trust, and doctors, in principle, ought not pass on any kind of information about their patients to other people and the public without the patients’ permission. The medical confidentiality, thus, adds another layer of protection for the good of the patients and the handling of their data, comprised of an ethical as well as a legal dimension. The principle of confidentiality could therefore be considered as a right of the patient and an obligation of the doctor.62 3.3.2.3.1 Protection of medical confidentiality at the European level Medical confidentiality finds its ethical basis in the Hippocratic Oath, which commands the duties and principles ascribed to physicians. The Declaration of Geneva, adopted in 1948, builds upon the Hippocratic Oath as a modernized version thereof, safeguarding the ethical obligations of care providers independent of the technological evolution.63 Furthermore, the duty of physicians to maintain the confidentiality of personal information of research subjects is enshrined in the Declaration of Helsinki.64 At the European level, Article 8 ECHR protects the right to secrecy concerning an individual’s medical state and the transmission of such data to other third parties (regardless of the intended use).65 As stated above, the European Court of Human Rights considered the confidentiality of health data as a “vital principle” in its case law, which pursues to maintain 61 ECtHR, Case of M.M. v UK, Judgement (Application no. 24029/07), 13 November 2012, para. 200. 62 Irish Medical Organisation (2011) IMO Role of the Doctor Series – Doctor...