Cross-border healthcare
Opinion on the proposal for a Directive on the application of patient's rights in cross-border healthcare, OJ C 128, 06.06.2009, p. 20
The proposal aims at establishing a Community framework for the provision of cross-border healthcare within the EU, for those occasions where the care patients seek is provided in another Member State than in their home country. The implementation of such a scheme requires the exchange of personal data relating to the health of patients between authorized organisations and healthcare professionals of different Member States.
The EDPS welcomes the proposal and expresses his support to the initiatives of improving the conditions for cross-border healthcare. He expresses concerns, however, about the fact that EC healthcare related initiatives are not always well co-ordinated with regard to ICT use, privacy and security, thus hampering the adoption of a universal data protection approach towards healthcare. This is also evident in the proposal where references to data protection are mainly of a general nature and do not adequately reflect the specific privacy-related needs of cross-border healthcare.
The EDPS defines two main areas of concern regarding data protection in cross-border healthcare: a) the different security levels which may be applied by the Member States for the protection of personal data, and b) privacy integration in e-health applications. To this end, the EDPS makes the following recommendations:
- Provision of a clear definition for 'health data'.
- Introduction of a specific Article on data protection, clearly describing the responsibilities of the Member States and identifying areas for further development.
- Adoption of a Community mechanism for the definition of a commonly acceptable security level for health data to be applied by the Member States.
- Incorporation of the notion of 'privacy by design' already in the proposed Community template for e-Prescription.
- Introduction of a more explicit reference to the specific requirements relating to subsequent use of data concerning health as laid down in Article 8 of Directive 95/46.