Data Privacy and Patient Consent

Synonyms

Data protection

Definition

Data privacy refers to the interest individuals and organisations have in the collection, sharing, use and disclosure of information about those individuals or organizations. Common information types raising data privacy issues include health (especially genetic), criminal justice, financial, and location. The recent rapid growth of electronic data archives and associated data technologies has increased the importance of data privacy issues, and has led to a growing body of legislation and codes of practice.

Patient consent, in relation to data, refers to a patient’s act of approving the collection, sharing, use or disclosure of information about them. It is important because data with appropriate patient consent often falls into exception clauses in privacy legislation.

The challenge in data privacy is to balance the need to share and use data with the need to protect personally identifiable information and respect patient consent. For example, a...