argomento: News del mese - Diritto Internazionale e Comunitario

Articoli Correlati: Lithuania - nature of personal data - patients’ relatives data

In a ruling adopted at the beginning of March 2022, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania recognized, for the first time, that personal data are not only the data referred to patient himself/herself, but also the data on patient's relatives, even if the latter are not identified by their names. The situation arose when a person of legal age who had been admitted to a medical institution during examinations provided to a doctor and data on his relatives. These data were entered in the patient's medical record – an epicrisis – which was transferred from one medical institution to another together with this young man, without ensuring the protection of patient's relatives' personal data. After the patient's father brought the dispute to court, it was found that the patient's epicrisis contained data such as the patient's father's occupation, position held, his former marital status, his children, and his state of health. The Court of First Instance held that the data concerning the applicant (the patient's father) constituted the applicant's personal data, notwithstanding the fact that the epicrisis was not drawn up in respect of the applicant but in respect of the medical condition of his son. According to the Court, the latter does not mean that the data contained in the epicrisis are only personal data of the applicant's son. The Court held that the requirements laid down in Articles 4, 6, 9 of the GDPR apply to the applicant's personal data referred to in the epicrisis. Such a situation is incompatible with the requirements of the legislation aimed at protecting the fundamental rights and freedoms of natural persons, in particular their right to the protection of personal data.