Data confidentiality and security
The European Health Telematics Observatory (EHTO) publishes a quarterly journal which gives an overview of the current healthcare telematics environment and its evolution. It is funded within the health sector of the EU's Telematics Applications programme, and serves to disseminate information on progress made with the telematics projects of the Fourth RTD Framework Programme. A series of recent articles published in the journal are now available on the EHTO homepage. These relate to important healthcare information and data security issues in the following fields: - Data confidentiality and security - an overview of issues in health data security and confidentiality under the new European data protection legislation; - The status of data protection in the UK - an insight into new developments which will lead to changes in the way patient confidentiality issues will be approached; - Data protection in Finland - an overview of issues related to the implementation of the Directive on the protection of individuals regarding the processing of personal data; - Confidentiality in healthcare in Greece; - UK review of non-clinical use of patient information.