MEDICAL CONFIDENTIALITY DISCLOSURE IN CONDITIONS OF EPIDEMIC THREATS

Abstract

The aim: To establish public opinion on the limits of medical confidentiality in an epidemic and the widespread use of applications that contain personal data, including those regarding health, to understand the possibility of changing the paradigm of public policy to protect medical confidentiality in an exacerbation of the epidemic situation. Materials and methods: This research is based on regulatory acts, scientific articles, and opinions of both medical workers and ordinary citizens of Poland, Germany, and Ukraine, judicial practice, doctrinal ideas, and views on this issue. Such methods as dialectical, comparative, analytic, synthetic, comprehensive, statistical, and generalization. Results: the results of a survey of residents of Poland, Germany, and Ukraine showed that one of the pandemic consequences was that a significant number of respondents were willing to partially renounce the right to medical confidentiality in the face of exacerbating epidemic threats to reduce the number of infected. Conclusions: In the face of the SARS-Cov-2 virus, nations worldwide have faced the challenge of respecting the right to privacy, particularly in terms of medical confidentiality. Virtual methods of patient communication with healthcare professionals use mobile electronic services (applications), and other new technologies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated the issue of understanding the boundaries of medical confidentiality and personal data protection. In order to maintain an effective balance between human rights and public health, the mass collection and storage of sensitive personal data must take place following the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data. At the same time, it is expedient to recommend states to specify specific provisions of this Regulation in order to avoid an expanded interpretation of certain of its provisions.