Healthcare is Imperative Component of Personal Data: Report

News Desk

Lahore: “Healthcare data is an imperative component of personal data and a reflection of one’s personal self, said Digital Rights Foundation Executive Director Nighat Dad.

“However, the absence of a data protection law in the country leaves us all vulnerable, particularly patients,” she added. Nighat Dad urged the government to enact a data protection law founded on a human rights approach. DRF Dad was speaking at the launching event of its report in Lahore.

The research report consisted of survey responses from 85 medical practitioners and 64 individuals who had accessed medical healthcare in the country.

A study finds that most people attach a great degree of importance to medical data: 38.6 per cent of respondents said they considered it equally important as other kinds of data, while 31.8 per cent said it was more important, and the remaining 29.5 per cent considered it less sensitive than general data.

A report titled ‘Data Privacy in Pakistan’s Healthcare Sector’ stated that only 40.9 per cent of the respondents said consent was obtained when data was collected, 31.8 per cent said it was not obtained, and the remaining 27.3 per cent said they were unsure, as consent is considered the benchmark for data collection.

Moreover, 36.4 per cent of patient data is recorded digitally, 27.3 per cent is manually collected, and 27.3 per cent said a hybrid approach is adopted.

DRF’s Data Privacy Portfolio Project Manager Zainab Durrani emphasised the importance of healthcare information given its sensitive nature.

Author of the research notes Zainab Durrani said, “There is an urgent need to focus our energies on addressing the basics of medical ethics, such as the all-important requirement of confidentiality, which is not as commonplace in the healthcare industry in Pakistan as we would have hoped.”

DRF shared its findings with experts from the healthcare and research sectors, primarily shedding light on how healthcare information, consisting of patient and medical practitioner data, is collected within the existing structures and policies in the healthcare sector in Pakistan.