The press release of the Council of Europe March 28, 2019:

“ The Council of Europe has issued a set of guidelines to its 47 member states urging them to ensure, in law and practice, that the processing of health-related data is done in full respect of human rights, notably the right to privacy and data protection.

With the development of new technological tools in the health sector the volume of health-related data processed has grown exponentially showing the need for guidance for health administrations and professionals.

In a Recommendation, applicable to both the public and private sectors, the Council of Europe´s Committee of Ministers, calls on governments to transmit these guidelines to health-care systems and to actors processing health-related data, in particular health-care professionals and data protection officers.

The recommendation contains a set of principles to protect health-related data incorporating the novelties introduced in the updated Council of Europe data protection convention, known as “Convention 108+”, opened for signature in October 2018.

The Committee of Ministers underlines that health-related data should be protected by appropriate security measures taking into account the latest technological developments, their sensitive nature and the assessment of potential risks. Protection measures should be incorporated by design to any information system which processes health-related data.

The recommendation contains guidance with regard to various issues including the legitimate basis for the data processing of health-care data – notably consent by the data subject -, data concerning unborn children, health-related genetic data, the sharing of health-related data by professionals and the storage of data.

The guidelines list a number of rights of data subjects, crucially the transparency of data processing. They also contain a number of principles that should be respected when data are processed for scientific research, when they are collected by mobile devices or when they are transferred across borders.”

These guidelines are very helpful for the health related data processors and give helpful principles and the legitimate basis for scientific data processing. These principals clarify for example article 9 GDPR, under J, which allows processing of personal data in case this is necessary for scientific or statistical purposes.

These guidelines were very necessary to have.