Health Data Sharing Across Jurisdictions: Business and Legal Perspectives: Use Case Analysis

Online health data sharing and transfer has become easier and more efficient than ever before in recent times. However, this has also led to data oriented challenges around privacy and protection. While transfer of sensitive health as well as personal data between organizations and countries requires high level of protection and privacy, most people involved in business processes in the service industry, especially one as complex as healthcare, are generally oblivious of the legal responsibilities and implications of data privacy regulations. In this paper, we propose a new framework that combines business and legal aspects of any health related business process in relation to protection and privacy of sensitive data exchange. This framework encompasses patients, businesses and organizations and includes an approach for considering legal regulations as well as factors that may affect privacy and security of data such as health data in business processes. Using the proposed framework, we have further analyzed an online healthcare patient registration process for an aged care provider as part of a European Union project involving several European countries and Australia. It also considers the applicability to the various process components within the context of European privacy laws.