4 key GDPR points essential for successful collaboration with a hospital

GDPR key points to master to collaborate with hospitals with confidence with these 4 essential GDPR key points. Prepare for compliance and ensure healthcare data security.

Hospitals demand particular attention to the protection of healthcare data, a major challenge in an exposed and controlled sector. To succeed in such a context, it's imperative to highlight the recent data leaks that hospitals have experienced, a reality that has scalded them and strengthened their resolve to strengthen healthcare data security and implement rigorous GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance.

Here are 4 key points for successfully collaborating with a hospital while complying with data protection standards.

Appoint a dedicated DPO

 The crucial first step in establishing robust GDPR compliance is the appointment of a DPO. This expert, who is mandatory when processing health data, will be the guarantor of GDPR compliance within your organization. The DPO, whether internal or external, acts as the main contact for authorities and partners, particularly hospitals, in exchanges of sensitive personal data.

It is responsible for completing hospital tenders and responding to frequent clients audits. It also plays a crucial role in carrying out AIPD (Data Protection Impact Analysis) to ensure your services or tools are GDPR.

Integrate GDPR compliance into the roadmap from the outset

📋 GDPR complianceshouldn't be an afterthought, but rather something to build into your roadmap from the start, for multiple reasons:

• This makes it easier to make the right choices for your services and tools.
• Improves compliance through audits and Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs)
• Support in finding your first service providers and building trusting relationships.

By integrating GDPR compliance into your roadmap ahead of time, you produce the required documents and establish compliance in its entirety (processes, compliant tools, user information, consents...). That's what a healthcare establishment like a hospital will remember.

Demonstrate compliance wherever data is processed

🔥 Compliance must be demonstrated not only globally, but specifically where hospital healthcare data is handled. This is particularly the case for data processed on digital tools, such as a symptom collection app.

So you need to be able to prove compliance with documentation: audit reports, action plans, DPIA conclusions, etc.

This is also the case for medical research, where health data is collected and processed. To establish solid medical research partnerships, you need to be able to prove the effectiveness of your innovation. This requires a precise description of the process used for the specific cases encountered (with, for example, an MR00X reference methodology).

Proactive data security solutions

👀 To successfully collaborate with hospitals, it's essential to anticipate data security needs, and therefore toanticipate the choice of existing solutions. It's best to have a list of the data processing that will be required and the results of the DPIAs in order to realize the risks involved and the security measures to be put in place.

These solutions include :

• Pseudonymization (or encryption): this is an effective security measure to protect personal data while enabling its use.
• In this sense, pseudonymization prevents direct identification.
• This process uses a mapping table to record the relationship between direct identifiers and pseudonyms. This is particularly the case for decision-support tools used by doctors (diagnosis, treatment, etc.).
• Anonymization: this involves using a set of techniques to make it impossible in practice to identify a person by any means whatsoever, and in an irreversible way.
• Anonymizing health data for medical research means preserving this information while making it impossible to identify the individuals concerned.
• This requires careful assessment by a legal expert to ensure GDPR compliance. For example, for blood test results, it would be necessary to remove all directly identifying information, such as names, social security numbers, addresses, etc.

By offering security solutions from the outset, you demonstrate your commitment to protecting sensitive data, reduce the risk of data leakage and make it easier for hospitals to accept working with you.

✅ S uccessfully working with a hospital requires careful preparation, early integration of GDPR compliance, constant demonstration of compliance and proactivity in proposing data security solutions. By adhering to the four key points listed above, you'll establish a solid foundation for working serenely with hospitals.

 Appoint a dedicated DPO

📋 Integrate GDPR compliance into the roadmap right from the start

🔥 Demonstrate compliance wherever data is processed

👀 Ensuring proactivity in data security solutions