A Study on Legal Protection, Inspection and Delivery of the Copies of Health & Medical Data

보건의료정보의 법적 보호와 열람.교부

In a broad term, health and medical data means all patient information that has been generated or circulated in government health and medical policies, such as medical research and public health, and all sorts of health and medical fields as well as patients' personal data, referred as medical data (filled out as medical record forms) by medical institutions. The kinds of health and medical data in medical records are prescribed by Articles on required medical data and the terms of recordkeeping in the Enforcement Decree of the Medical Service Act. As EMR, OCS, LIS, telemedicine and u-health emerges, sharing and protecting digital health and medical data is at issue in these days. At medical institutions, health and medical data, such as medical records, is classified as "sensitive information" and thus is protected strictly. However, due to the circulative property of information, health and medical data can be public as well as being private. The legal grounds of health and medical data as such are based on the right to informational self-determination, which is one of the fundamental rights derived from the Constitution. In there, patients' rights to refuse the collection of information, to control recordkeeping (to demand access, correction or deletion) and to control using and sharing of information are rooted. In any processing of health and medical data, such as generating, recording, storing, using or disposing, privacy can be violated in many ways, including the leakage, forgery, falsification or abuse of information. That is why laws, such as the Medical Service Act and the Personal Data Protection Law, and the Guideline for Protection of Personal Data at Medical Institutions (by the Ministry of Health and Welfare) provide for technical, physical, administrative and legal safeguards on those who handle personal data (health and medical information-processing personnel and medical institutions). The Personal Data Protection Law provides for the collection, use and sharing of personal data, and the regulation thereon, the disposal of information, the means of receiving consent, and the regulation of processing of personal data. On the contrary, health and medical data can be inspected or delivered of the copies, based on the principle of restriction on fundamental rights prescribed by the Constitution. For instance, Article 21(Access to Record) of the Medical Service Act, and the Personal Data Protection Law prescribe self-disclosure, the release of information by family members or by laws, the exchange of medical data due to patient transfer, the secondary use of medical data, such as medical research, and the release of information and the release of information required by the Personal Data Protection Law.