CCTOS: Confidentiality Issues

• Issues:
  • Confidentiality is critical for the patient.  Although in principle all care providers have always an obligation of confidentiality, the question is to avoid unnecessary risks.
  • Confidentiality between doctors may sometimes be an issue too.
    
• Approaches:
  • Role Based Access Control principle, i.e. access to the patient record must be limited to the actors who are currently really necessary for his care and who have the agreement of the patient. 
    
  • Explicit care Team management, i.e. a short list of who exactly in charge of the patient.  At one side new Care Team members can be invited by persons who are already Care Team members, as well by the patient himself.  At the other side the patient could occasionally let remove a member.  Anyhow Care Team memberships are of limited duration, only during a meaningful delay after the latest contact.
  • The new vision implies much more transparency between the healthcare professionals.  For the benefit of the patient, care providers, when in charge of the same patient, should share all relevant information.  However when there is no common patient, information do not need to be shared except for scientific purposes and then in an anonymous way. This is good for both the patient privacy, as well for potential competition issues between care providers.