Consent and confidentiality - legal implications of electronic transmission of prescriptions

摘要

The courts and the textbook writers have spent much time and energy on medical confidentialial which deals specifically with pharmacists. One notable exception is the cornerstone case in the Court of Appeal about the use of anonymised data from patient medication records (the "Source Informatics" case~1-3). Consent-to-treatment issues have until recently hardly affected pharmacists for the simple reason that pharmacists have traditionally not been much involved in initiating treatment where consent might be an issue. But pharmacists can no longer avoid grappling with issaues of consent in another context: consent to the use of personal data.