Press Release: EDPS opinion on patients’ rights: specific data protection dimension of cross-border healthcare needs to be addressed in more concrete terms

On 2 December 2008, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) adopted an opinion on a proposal for a Directive on the application of patients' rights in cross-border healthcare. The proposal aims at establishing a Community framework for the provision of cross-border healthcare within the European Union (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 welcomed the proposal and supported the initiatives for improving the conditions for cross-border healthcare. He however expressed concerns about the fact that current Community healthcare-related initiatives are not always well co-ordinated with privacy and security considerations - especially with regard to the use of new information and communication technologies, thus hampering the adoption of a universal data protection approach towards healthcare. This was also evident in the current proposal where, although references to data protection can be found, these were mainly of a general nature and failed to specifically address the data protection dimension of cross-border healthcare.