Ninth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

The digitalized medical and health records (HR) of citizens are stored in Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Personal Healthcare Records (PHR). The quality of medical care will be improved if physicians can access the past HR of patients. Also, redundant medical examinations will be avoided, which will result in medical cost savings. A user-friendly service that enables citizens to share their HR with their physicians is essential to achieve the aforementioned purpose. The involvement of private businesses is expected to make such service available to citizens. However, recently, many citizens have been frustrated with the collection and control of personal data by the giants of ICT industries, and, in response, governments are establishing rules to regulate collection and handling of personal data. In contrast, sharing HR on the infrastructure provided by private businesses presupposes that these private providers handle medical and health records that fall within the most delicate types of personal data. We have to design and implement laws that promote the sharing of HR while ensuring the protection of personal data. There are a number of issues that need the intervention of laws, to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, availability and portability of HR, compatibility between EHR and PHR, and between multiple PHRs, and to ensure the portability of records between a PHR service provided by one company and a PHR service provided by a different company. The author discusses and proposes the requirements of such laws and proposes a practicable legal design to promote the sharing of HR.