Vision and mission

Health data poses legal challenges. On the one hand, it’s important to keep this data confidential. After all, we don’t want employers or insurers to know everything about us. On the other hand, sometimes this data must be available, for example, when someone with allergies or diabetes is unconscious. The importance of confidentiality conflicts with the importance of data availability. Furthermore, data is a vast source of knowledge that scientists can draw on for better healthcare in the future. The privacy interests of current patients conflict with the interests of future generations. Third, doctors cannot do their work properly without knowing everything, and patients must therefore be able to trust that this confidentiality will remain. On the other hand, unfortunately, there are also bad doctors, and to protect patients and the affordability of the system from them, medical confidentiality must be broken. Therefore, there are all sorts of conflicting interests surrounding health data. The legislature must specify what is permitted and prohibited, and these rules must also meet the requirement of legal certainty. All this makes the law surrounding health data so complex, but also so interesting.