Bundestag: Petitions Committee maintains opt-out for electronic patient file
MEPs have declared a petition that the e-patient file should only be created with the clear consent of those affected to be closed.
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A petition stating that electronic patient records (EPRs) should only be set up with the express consent of those affected (opt-in) has been shelved. On Wednesday, the Bundestag's Petitions Committee voted with the CDU/CSU and SPD coalition parties to recommend to the Bundestag that the petition process be closed. The MPs justified this by stating that there were currently no indications of parliamentary activity. A corresponding resolution in plenary is therefore considered a formality.
The online submission from May 2023 reached 58,188 signatures in a short timeframe. It therefore exceeded the quorum of 30,000 supporters, meaning that the committee had to deal with the matter.
The petitioner based her initiative on the fact that the electronic patient file is automatically created on central servers for all citizens from birth. People who find out about this in good time could object. However, this would not be sufficient to protect intimate medical data. She points out that the Bundestag has rejected the opt-out approach to organ donations. In addition, the Health Data Utilization Act would allow researchers and other interested parties to access sensitive information from electronic patient records.
Politicians focus on the great potential of the EPR
However, the majority of the committee sees great potential in making the EPR available across the board. Other EU countries, such as Austria and France, also have a contradictory solution. To ensure that insured people are always “in control of their data,” they have the option to object.
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With the increased availability of important health data, medical treatment decisions could be made on a better data basis, emphasize the members of the governing coalition. In addition, the legislator has considered the special need to protect health data by restricting the group of people authorized to access it. Via the research data center, authorized people were only given controlled access to anonymized or pseudonymized data in virtual processing rooms. However, there are doubts whether this is sufficient to prevent re-identification.
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