Recommendations on Processing of Personal Health Data Are Adopted

2016-05-11 13:18:14

Aimed strengthening the confidence of the citizens to the medical and healthcare sectors and improving the protection of patients’ rights, the Office of the Personal Data Protection Inspector issued the Recommendations Relating to Processing of the Personal Health Data.

An advisory guideline was designed for the medical service providers, as well as for patients, reflected the various recommendations relating to the process of the personal health data including:

  • What are the principles of protecting legitimacy of the personal health data process;
  • In which cases could be disclosed the personal health data to any third party;
  • What are the liabilities of the medical service providers for protecting the safety of the data;
  • The rules of video surveillance at medical service providers’ institutions;
  • Patients rights’ as a subject of the data.

“Medical service provider institutions are collecting, storing and using personal health data on a daily basis. Keeping this in mind, we have considered adopting the recommendations, therefore sometimes deliberately and sometimes even neglectfully, the illegal access, usage, disclose, change or obliterate the information, not protecting the safety rules during the data processing could heavily, morally and materially damage the patient and cause the stigmatization of him/her,” the Office of the Personal Data Protection announced.

Moreover, the Office of the Personal Data Protection offers the consultations to the medical service provider institutions, that they according to the law to implement the organizational-technical arrangements for protecting the personal data and avoiding breach of it.

The recommendation also outlines that the patient has the right, in case his personal data would be processed illegally or violated, to address the Personal Data Inspector or the court.

The Recommendations are prepared on the basis of the Georgian Law on Personal Data Protection, Healthcare Regulatory norms, case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe’s # (97) 5 recommendation.