Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 110
July 2008
I. v. Finland - 20511/03
Judgment 17.7.2008 [Section IV]
Article 8
Article 8-1
Respect for private life
Insufficient protection of medical records of HIV-positive nurse from unauthorised access: violation
Facts: The applicant worked as a nurse in a public hospital. From 1987 she paid regular visits to the polyclinic for infectious diseases at the same hospital, after being diagnosed as HIV-positive. Early in 1992 she began to suspect that her colleagues were aware of her illness. At the time hospital staff had free access to the patient register which contained information on patients’ diagnoses and treating doctors. She confided her suspicions to her doctor and the hospital register was amended so that henceforth only the treating clinic’s personnel had access to its patients’ records. The applicant was registered under a false name and given a new social-security number. She later lodged a complaint with the County Administrative Board with a view to establishing who had accessed her confidential patient records, but the hospital administration advised that it was not possible to obtain that information under the data system then in place. A claim for damages by the applicant in the civil courts was dismissed because of a lack of firm evidence that her patient records had been unlawfully consulted.
Law: The confidentiality of health data was crucial not only to a patients’ privacy but also to preserve their confidence in the medical profession and in the health services in general. These considerations were especially valid in the case of HIV infection, given the sensitive issues surrounding the disease. While the strict application of domestic law would have constituted a substantial safeguard by making it possible to police access to the records, the system at the hospital had made it impossible to clarify retroactively the use of patient records or to determine whether information contained on the applicant and her family had been given to or accessed by unauthorised parties. Moreover, at the material time the records could also be read by staff not directly involved in the applicant’s treatment. Although the hospital had subsequently taken ad hoc measures to protect the applicant against unauthorised disclosures by restricting access to treating personnel and registering the applicant under a false name and social-security number, this had come too late. The applicant had lost her civil action because she was unable to prove on the facts a causal connection between the deficiencies in the access security rules and the dissemination of the information about her medical condition. However, to place such a burden of proof on her was to overlook the acknowledged deficiencies in the hospital’s record-keeping at the material time. The decisive factor was that the records system in place in the hospital was clearly not in accordance with the statutory requirements and this had not been given due weight by the domestic courts. Nor was the fact that the domestic legislation allowed the applicant to claim compensation for unlawful disclosure sufficient to protect her private life. What was required was practical and effective protection to exclude any possibility of unauthorised access occurring in the first place. No such protection had been forthcoming in the applicant’s case.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
Article 41 – EUR 5,771.80 in respect of pecuniary damage and EUR 8,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage.
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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