Personal Health Data and the Significance of Its Administrative Protection

Abstract

The issue of personal data protection has been one of the focal points of attention in recent decades. This is because the protection of personal data is a form of realizing the right to privacy as a fundamental human right. Personal data refers to information about a specific individual’s characteristics that serves as a means of their identification. Personal data protection in Bosnia and Herzegovina is regulated by the Law on Personal Data Protection. This law governs the principles of personal data processing, the obligations of data controllers and processors, the rights of data subjects, as well as sanctions for violations of the law. Since 2016, the protection of personal data in the European Union has been regulated by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which has significantly improved the system for protecting personal data. A particularly significant category of personal data is personal health data, which includes identification and identifying information about an individual’s health and medical condition, their medical diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, as well as information about substances that can identify that individual. Data related to an individual’s health is a crucial and potentially vulnerable aspect of their life. These are the most intimate data about an individual, the unauthorized and unjustified disclosure of which can subject them to shame, ridicule, and stigmatization, causing them significant, primarily non-material, harm. Misuse of patient information not only violates their privacy but also undermines their dignity. Therefore, personal health data can only be processed for health-related purposes, i.e., for the benefit of the individual and society as a whole. Laws regulating patients’ rights in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (the Law on Healthcare and the Law on the Rights, Obligations, and Responsibilities of Patients) guarantee patients the right to confidentiality of information and privacy, the right to data secrecy, and the right to access their medical records. The provisions of these laws significantly meet the standards for the protection of personal health data. However, in order to improve the situation in this area, there is a need to harmonize the provisions of the general data protection law, which is subsidiarily applied in the protection of personal health data, with the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation.