A Study on Privacy Information Protection of Medical Big Data in China

A recent development of information technology (IT) has brought many changes to hospital treatment and medical administrative services. Healthcare using clinical data accumulated by electronic medical records is changing the industry paradigm. In addition, with the spread of mobile internet and wearable health devices, it has been possible to build an infrastructure for health data that can converge ‘health’ and ‘medical.’ It provides convenience and speed not experienced in traditional healthcare through medical institutions such as hospitals. On the other hand, the collection and utilization of medical big data in medicine and electronic medical records have brought about many changes in privacy projection. The privacy of patients is used in hospitals and other institutions in a way called ‘information privacy.’ In other words, privacy is used as a piece of ‘information’ and is used for disease treatment, medical research, and insurance product development. As medical big data is collected from various devices and reprocessed in various ways, however, the risk of personal privacy rights being infringed has increased. Although these risks are inherent, a legal basis is not perfectly established yet. Therefore, this study reviews the current status of medical big data utilization in China and analyzes various legal issues related to the privacy information of medical big data. Besides, the study examines the civil legal status and protection measureless of privacy inflammation on medical big data and then proposes legislative improvement measures.