Page 145 - Human Rights

Faculty of Nursing
Adult care Nursing Department

Privacy and confidentiality of health data imply the strict observance of professional secrecy by all

agents involved in the processing of personal, biological, and/or genetic data, besides scrupulous

archiving of the individual clinical records, regardless of the way in which data are stored (con
venational or digital).

Digitalization of clinical records is one of the most important measures of the modernization of

the healthcare system but must be accompanied by necessary precautions so that patients’ right

to privacy is not violated.

Considering that information systems can bring several benefits to patients, their families, and
society at large, the implementation of an intranet may jeopardize the right to individual privacy.

Therefore, measures should be taken to limit unauthorized access to private information.

In specific circumstances, the right to be forgotten is a solution to preserve individual privacy and
personal identity, leading to an erasure of personal data from digital networks (Correia et al. 2021).

One possible solution is to implement protection mechanisms for access to digital data, including

the creation of complex keywords at different levels that limit access to the patient, their family

(with consent), or to the healthcare staff directly involved in the patient’s care.

However, this situation is considerably aggravated by the generalization of big data-associated
universal access (World Health Organization 2019).

The idea of big data is one of the great challenges of global society that goes beyond healthcare

because the protection of sensitive personal data is a right that is progressively valued by different
communities.

An example of this evolution is EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (European Union 2016).

Respecting the previously expressed wishes of the patient is also a variant of the principle of

134 Academic Year 2025/2026