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Since the lockdown has been announced and is being followed by India, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India issued the ‘Telemedicine Practice Guidelines’ on March 25, 2020. These guidelines are mainly for medical practitioners or doctors and talk about the fashion in which patients can have access to treatment by doctors sitting at home through various internet services, messaging or audio calling applications.
This move of the Ministry is essentially to provide effective and efficient healthcare services by collecting personal data and sacred information about the patients which includes name, medical history, etc. According to the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002, doctors have the obligation to collect medical records and other sensitive data related to their patients for as long as 3 years. Though there is a rule to maintain secrecy about, such information but if any demand is made for medical records or legal personnel, the doctor has to make such information accessible within 72 hours.
The Practice Guidelines state that all doctors are required to safeguard the privacy of the patient according to the IMC Regulations, the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Information Technology Rules, 2011 and various privacy laws that delve into protection of data.
However, it is pertinent to note that the SPDI Rules, that regulate the collection and storage of data of such sensitive nature, wherein private data like the medical records, are only ‘applicable to a body corporate’. According to the Section 43-A of the IT Act, a body corporate is well-defined as “any company and includes a firm, sole proprietorship or other association of individuals engaged in commercial or professional activities”. Thus, a doctor or a medical practitioner gathering and processing various personal data and medical records will not be declared as a ‘body corporate’. This brings us to the conclusion that the protections instituted under the SPDI Rules shall not apply to the personal, especially medical records of the patient who is looking for such a treatment by doctors. This threatens the Right to Privacy granted by the Constitution of India.
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