Emerging issues in the mexican legislation on the use of personal data in medical care and confidentiality as a right of physicians

Abstract

Recently, new laws on the handling of personal data have been published. Physicians should know them, since the information they obtain from the patient has been subject to what is therein established. To harmonize medical activity with these provisions, it is necessary to review the current legal framework. After this analysis, we observed that data the doctor registers in the medical record in the form of opinions or technical observations directed to other health professionals are not included. We consider this information should be protected the same way as that of the patient, in order to give legal certainty to the right of doctors to the discretion and confidentiality established in the “prescriptive freedom”.