Ethics, privacy and the legal framework governing medical data: opportunities or threats for biomedical and public health research?

Archives of Public Health

Yves Coppieters¹  Alain Levêque¹ 

[1] Research centre in epidemiology, biostatistics and clinical trials, School of Public Health, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Route de Lennik 808, CP 596, 1070, Brussels, Belgium

关键词: Data analysis;    Ethical considerations;    Medical data;    Privacy;   

Others  :  790825
DOI  :  10.1186/0778-7367-71-15

 received in 2012-12-26, accepted in 2013-06-07,  发布年份 2013

【 摘 要 】

Privacy is an important concern in any research programme that deals with personal medical data. In recent years, ethics and privacy have become key considerations when conducting any form of scientific research that involves personal data. These issues are now addressed in healthcare professional training programmes. Indeed, ethics, legal frameworks and privacy are often the subject of much confusion in discussions among healthcare professionals. They tend to group these different concepts under the same heading and delegate responsibility for “ethical” approval of their research programmes to ethics committees. Public health researchers therefore need to ask questions about how changes to legal frameworks and ethical codes governing privacy in the use of personal medical data are to be applied in practice. What types of data do these laws and codes cover? Who is involved? What restrictions and requirements apply to any research programme that involves medical data?

【 授权许可】

   
2013 Coppieters and Levêque; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

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