遠距健康照護的隱私權保護

Abstract

遠距醫療照護透過資通訊科技和醫學技術的整合，讓醫療服務得突破地理限 制，使病患不出門就能獲得健康照護，能減少病患往返醫院的不便和時間成本、有 效減少住院率、院內交互感染率，不僅提升醫療品質，也有效降低醫療成本。由於 這些優點，遠距醫療照護已成醫療法新興熱門議題。 我國醫療法令制定時未考慮遠距行為的正面價值，故推展遠距醫療照護時，需 先解決許多法令障礙及疑義。其中，健康資訊的隱私保護，是重大難題之一。目前 雖有電腦處理個人資料保護法，但例外容許情況過多、未要求具體有效保護措施 等，在在侵蝕資訊隱私。醫護人員的法定保密義務乃以傳統醫病關係為典範，未考 慮產業跨業整合，且通訊設備大量、頻繁傳輸，這些與傳統醫療行為態樣有別之特 性。再加上現行法對非醫療業者的權責認定不明，難促進此產業之發展。 本研究擬從醫療法及資訊、通訊法出發，結合法律多元觀點，在平衡個人隱私 保護和促進病患選擇權的兩種價值上，期能提出具體有效的法律原則，進而建議適 用於遠距醫療照護的隱私權保護制度，作為日後修法、立法的參考基礎。讓我國遠 距醫療發展更符合社會需求，也順應國際趨勢。

By integrating information and communication technology with medical science, telehealth produces medical service crossing geographic limitations, give patients home healthcare, reduces the inconvenience and cost of transportation back and forth between hospitals and homes, effectively lowers down the hospitalization rate and cross-infection rate, and decrease medical cost. Because of these advantages, telehealth has become a hot emerging issue in health law. Since the positive values of distance healthcare were ignored when the Taiwanese health laws were promulgated, a lot of legal obstacles and vagueness must be resolved before telehealth could be promoted in Taiwan. Among all issues, how to protect the information privacy is one of the biggest challenges. Though the legislation promulgated the Computer-Processed Personal Data Protection Law, but the law does not require concrete effective protective mechanisms and permits too many exceptions that might endanger information privacy. Healthcare professionals’current legal duties of confidentiality are based on the traditional model of doctor-patient relationship and ignore the different characteristics in telehealth, such as integration of different industry, and frequent huge amount of informational transmission. In addition, it is uncertain to determine the liability of non-medical service providers under the current legal framework. These factors block the development of telehealth industry in Taiwan. This research plans to start from reviewing health laws, information regulations, and communication statutes. By integrating plural viewpoints and balancing personal privacy protection and patients’choice, this research hope to determine effective legal principles that could be a useful basis for legislation and judiciary to constitute an appropriate privacy protection system in telehealth. The system will make the development of telehealth in Taiwan more fit the social demand and catch the trend of the international society.