Personal data protection related to patient’s health: fundamentals, privacy protection and comments on new eu regulation 2016/679

Abstract

Data protection is one of the law specialties that has expanded the most over the last two decades. The development of digital technologies, reaching all areas of living, as well as the mainstreaming of a matter such as the protection of personal data, which affects almost any operation we do in our daily lives, has generated the need of guarantying the use of these data in a respectful, appropriate manner, and particularly in the case of such sensitive matters, so linked to the constitutional right to data privacy, as are those relating to individual’s health. The health field is a subspecialty within the data protection law, not only for the provided superprotection, but also for the needs and obligations that arise in the exercise of the profession, creating a frail twin compromise: on one side we find that health data are subject to a particularly tight treatment, while on the other there is a need to articulate a dynamic method for health professionals that allows them to provide a legal while prompt and quality performance in their assistances, which is required for a true deliver of their services.