A Legal Framework for Security in European Healthcare Telematics

The importance of health care is obvious, and so are the advantages that information and communication technology is bringing to health care, its quality, its availability and its affordability. Equally important, however, is security. Security for health care information systems is not only a technical matter, it is a social goal to be achieved and to be maintained by acknowledging the social values in which such systems operate, such as the essential relationship of trust between the patient and the doctor and individual as well as collective privacy, values which find their expression in the normative environment of these systems. As the report shows, observing security from this perspective, in time, turns legal requirements from obstacles to assets for successful implementation and acceptance.