A Study On E-health And Patients' Data Protection In China

With the rapid development of e-health,patients ' data protection has becomea significant issue which has aroused intense attention from home and abroad.This articleinvestigates the ethical and legal concerns on patients ' data protection in the context of e-health.This thesis consists of four parts.Part one introduces the challenges of e-health and data protection in China,covering three issues to be solved and the deficiencies of existing legal norms.Specifically,e-health has brought several problems,relating to data security,second use of patients' data and patients' autonomy of their individual data.Besides,domestic regulations and legislation about data protection are incapable to provide a complete legal system for e-health and patients' data protection.The second part reviews the foreign model of e-health and data protection(mainly the United States and European Union),with a view to providing a reference for China.To be specific,the United States protects personal health data with the privacy protection model,while the EU protects data from the perspective of data rights.Considering specific domestic legal system,when determining the protection model of patient's e-health data,our legislators can learn from the EU model.The third part points out that patients'data rights play a very important role in e-health date protection based on the analysis of China's legal status,its unique legal traditions,and the advanced researches at home and abroad.This part also gives a detailed introduction to patients' data rights,including the value of protecting patients'data rights,contents of the right,obligations of data controllers,restrictions on the right,and types of infringements and remedies.Firstly,patients' data rights include proprietary rights of data,patients' right of informed consent,patients' right to access,right of correction and right to be forgotten,etc.Secondly,this kind of right also requires duties of data controllers.These data controllers should comply with the"specific purpose obligations","limited uses obligations",obligation of secrecy,and have restricted access to patients' e-health data.In addition,in order to protectinterests of data controllers,such as medical practitioners,internet medical platforms,and governments,the law should also give these controllers data rights which enable them to possess,use and benefit from their core business.The fourth part presents some other measures to better protect patients'e-healthdata.Government departments should strengthen supervision over the protection of e-health data,which can be carried out in the following five aspects:to clarify the subject of supervision,to improve the supervision system,to attach great importance to the standardization construction,to add the rights protection channel,and to increase the punishment mechanism.Moreover,the law should also regulate the government's collection and processing of patient's e-health data.Finally,there are many deficiencies in legislation,judiciary,and administrative enforcement of law in e-health and patients' data protection in China.In order to make up for lags in law,the related enterprisesshould strengthen theirself-discipline,organize professionals to formulate regulations for the protection of patients' e-health data,and constantly make adjustments with times.