Health Data under NDHB should be protected under the Personal Data Protection Bill: IAMAI
The Internet and Mobile Association of India (“IAMAI”) has submitted a comment to the National Digital Health Blueprint (“NDHB”) which was released by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (“Ministry”) in public domain for comments/views of the stakeholders on July 15, 2019.
The Niti Aayog proposed a National Health Stack (“NHS”) to provide the foundational components that will be required in health IT programs in India. A committee was constituted by the Ministry to further examine the components of the NHS and to propose a framework and implementation plan. The Committee then came up with the NDHB report.
The NDHB report states that district level electronic databases shall be created to register the citizen’s health data and details of diseases of public importance. It is also proposed that National Health Information Architecture will be rolled-out which will link the public and private health providers operating at state as well as national level.
IAMAI has commented that the health data forms part of “sensitive personal information” and shall be covered under the proposed Personal Data Protection Bill (“Bill”) and not by NDHB. As long as the Bill is not passed, no health data shall be collected and stored under NDHB.
NDHB also provides that it will design the applications and services to be offered to public. IAMAI proposes an alternative to this option and comments that NDHB shall allow the private developers to develop the application and let the public chose the most efficient as per their need. As long as the applications developed by such private developers conform with the requirement of digital health service, NDHB shall not interfere, as it will only make the process redundant.
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The NDHB proposes to collect and store health related data of the individuals in a database, which the IAMAI has rightly pointed out, forms part of sensitive personal information and shall be protected under the Personal Data Protection Bill. The NDHB has been released in public domain for comments and it is not yet finalised.
However, it will be important to see if the NDHB incorporates the response made by IAMAI with respect to personal data as well as allowing the private developers to develop applications for health services.
Disclaimer: This post has been prepared for informational purposes only. The information/or observations contained in this post does not constitute legal advice and should not be acted upon in any specific situation without seeking proper legal advice from a practicing attorney.