Health Data Treatment. An Approach to the International and EU Legal Framework

Abstract

This chapter aims to study the treatment or processing – including collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, and other uses – of personal data linked to health, under the European Union law framework (with reference to the European Charter of the European Union and EU legislation), adopting a comparative and international perspective (especially taking into account the sources of the European Council, like the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine). Indeed, the health treatment fields face ethical and legal problems regarding the use of personal data. As we know, patients can benefit from having health or medical information available, and medical decisions can be more effective with a better understanding of clinical histories, medical and health data. But at the same time, we need to guarantee privacy rights – including data protection – and confidentiality, dealing with health data treatment challenges from a fundamental rights perspective.

Keywords: health data, data processing, data treatment, EU law, GDPR

JEL Classification: K20, K30, I18