Data, Dignity & Digital Health: Balancing Technological Innovation And Patient Privacy

Long before digital health platforms existed, medical ethics treated patient information as confidential. The Hippocratic tradition reflects this clearly, requiring doctors to keep private whatever they learn in the course of treating a patient, except where disclosure is authorised by law or consent. Modern data protection law builds on this ethical foundation, translating professional duties of confidence into legal obligations that apply across digital systems, platforms and supply chains.

Globally, this special status is reflected in data protection regimes that classify health data as sensitive or special category data. Under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, health data is subject to stricter conditions for processing and enhanced safeguards. Nigeria has adopted the same approach in its own legal framework.