CRIMINAL LAW PROTECTION OF THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN THE MEDICAL FIELD: INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL CONTEXT

Olena RYABCHYNSKA, Eduard STOMATOV

RYABCHYNSKA O., STOMATOV E. (2022), CRIMINAL LAW PROTECTION OF THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY IN THE MEDICAL FIELD: INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL CONTEXT, Scientific Bulletin of Dnipropetrovsk State University of Internal Affairs, Special Issue № 1, 158-164

DOI: 10.31733/2078-3566-2022-5-158-164

 

ABSTRACT. The article analyzed the fundamental provisions of legal regulation of the information content about a person’s health status and its correlation with such concepts used both in international documents and national legislation as private and family life, confidential information, medical information, medical secrecy, and medical privacy, taking into account international legal standards in this field as well as academic research in the theory of law and branch disciplines, in particular constitutional, criminal, administrative, and civil law, legislation in the field of information, health care, and ECHR practices, etc.

The following are the promising areas of research in the field of criminal law protection of a person’s privacy in the medical field: analysis of the correlation between the right of a person to private and family life as an object of criminal law protection and the object of criminal offenses under Art. 132 and Art. 145 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine; clarification of the content of the “medical privacy”, “medical secrecy”, and “confidential information about the health status” concepts in order to eliminate the existing unclearly defined, conflicting provisions, and gaps in the regulatory framework in the part of informational and legal relations that negatively affect the ensuring of constitutional rights and freedoms of a person and a citizen; identification of persons who may have access to such confidential information in order to clarify the circle of persons who may be recognized as subjects of a criminal offense under Art. 145 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine; improvement of the legal regulation of the procedure for collection, storage, use and circulation of information, in particular, on the mental state of a person, their compulsory examination and treatment, use of confidential data in the field of psychiatry, to which the Constitutional Court of Ukraine drew attention when interpreting Articles 3, 23, 31, 47, 48 of the Law of Ukraine “On Information”, etc.

Keywords: the right to respect for private life, information about the human health status, confidential information, medical secrecy, medical privacy.

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