Education Toolkits

Privacy and managing health information in general practice

Privacy and information security

Last revised: 12 Jul 2024

Privacy and information security

Effective information security practices and policies are essential to ensure the privacy of health and business information. Additionally, the use of healthcare identifiers instead of names is useful to protect privacy along with establishing clear policies for the use of information in health research.

Your practice must protect personal information it holds from:

  • misuse, interference and loss
  • unauthorised access, modification or disclosure.

Cross-border disclosures (for example, disclosing information to an overseas recipient or using cloud computing companies) must first undergo a thorough risk assessment to ensure no privacy breaches will occur.
As previously discussed, it is essential for your practice to:

  • conduct in-depth risk assessments
  • ensure safe electronic transfer of information
  • safely communicate via electronic mediums with patients
  • securely de-identify and destroy patient data
  • have an effective and updated security policy.

You can access more information on topics in this section via the links below:

This event attracts CPD points and can be self recorded

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