To Discuss The Privacy Protection Of Personal Medical Information

The right of privacy is one of the basic rights entitled by natural persons, and it embodied human's dignity and value. The protection of the privacy right draws more and more attention nowadays with the development of social civilization. It has becoming a hot topic discussed by experts and scholars with the arrival of the Information Age. Because of the particularities of personal medical information which containing a lot of sensitive information and the specialties of medical service, the owner of the information takes weak control and little option in the areas of collecting and using medical information. It is extremely urgent to protect personal medical privacy considering the following facts: the wide usage of medical information system and electronic medical record, the lagging concept of privacy protection, the lack of relevant legislation and a massive threatens from possible medical privacy leak.It is rather unsubstantially established currently in China in respect of privacy protection considering the realities that it has not formally admitted the privacy protection right as a basic human right; the laws to protect private information have not released yet, not to mention the special protection of medical privacy; most of the secrecy obligations outlined in medical regulations have no use except swearing for the lack of corresponding punishment system. Comparatively, many other countries and regions are improving their privacy protection of the medical information step by step and their measuring emphasis lies in the personal rights of using and obtaining medical information, the consent of the medical main body, secrecy obligations and so on. In addition, they apply self-discipline, scientific tools and other protection modes, which is significance for reference.This thesis is formed by four parts.In the first part, the thesis summarizes the basic problems of privacy right and information privacy right, including the origin, addition and property of privacy right. And this part also give a description of the background, the comprehension of the concept and the protection modes of information privacy right.In the second part, the thesis introduces the content of medical information privacy; analyses the particularities of the medical information, the ownership of medical information rights, the conflicts of interests between the knowing rights of medical treatment and the progress of medical science, and the necessity to protect it for the possible information leak brought by electronic case record.In the third part, after comparing the regulations of protecting medical secrecy practiced in America, Canada and the Taiwan district, we obtain their measuring keys are stipulating the control right and consent right of individuals, the secrecy obligation, scientific safety protection and the settings of supervision organs.The fourth part is the key of the essay. It concludes and gives comments of the current situation of personal medical information in China firstly. Then, suggestions to optimize the medical privacy protection are proposed. The author believes that it is also of great importance to speed up the process of establishing special laws and regulations to protect medical privacy, clarify the control right and consent right of medical information, stipulate the secrecy obligations of relevant people, intensify the self-discipline awareness and resort to scientific measures. By taking various methods, we can establish a basic frame to protect medical privacy effectively.