Get to grips with protecting health data in light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

People use technologies to track their fitness and health. Medical and health professionals use technologies to treat patients. These technologies generate a lot of health data. As a consequence, personal data is collected and left everywhere, which makes it vulnerable. With technological developments in the health sector come questions of privacy. Do you use wearables or apps to track your fitness and health? Do you have a digital patient file? Do you work in healthcare and increasingly use modern technologies? Do you otherwise work with health or fitness data? And are you aware of the risks involved? How do you protect the data?

The GDPR and health data

This course will explore the protection of health data in light of the new GDPR which will become binding law on 25 May 2018. The GDPR aims to improve data protection across the EU and is a very significant change in data protection regulation. The new regulation provides more and stricter privacy rules, more responsibilities for organisations when handling personal data and stricter supervision on processing activities. This means that the GDPR will also impact the processing of health data, which is a special category of personal data, also referred to as sensitive data. Sensitive data is protected by even stricter rules.

These new standards imposed by the GDPR require a change in policies and practices, including organisations and companies processing health data. Those who fail to comply with the new rules may be faced with major consequences such as complex proceedings and heavy fines. The GDPR not only applies to organisations established in the EU, but also to organisations from third countries when processing data of EU citizens.

Understand the GDPR and its impact on health data in a unique online course

By exploring the changing data protection landscape, you will improve your awareness of how to protect health data in an evolving digital and technical world. The University of Groningen has developed a unique online course explaining how health data should be protected under the new regulation. The course gives the necessary insight on how to handle health data in light of the GDPR.

Participants will learn the essentials of the GDPR specifically as regards health data in a course that will help to increase awareness and knowledge about the EU data protection landscape. Learn how the GDPR helps to protect your health data and get familiar with rights, obligations, risks, safeguards and many other related aspects.

The course is developed for anyone who is interested in the legal framework concerning health data. It will be of particular interest to medical and health professionals as well as medical researchers, insurers, IT developers, people working in the public domain, students, patients and other individuals who want to learn more about data protection and the GDPR as regards health data.

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More information:
Security, Technology and e-Privacy (STeP) research group , University of Groningen, Faculty of Law
Melania Tudorica & Trix Mulder