The Constitutional Court yesterday found that the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) allowing access to the national health database for academic research was partly unconstitutional.
In the court’s Interpretation No. 13, Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) said that given the lack of an independent monitoring mechanism to ensure data protection under the National Health Insurance Act (全民健保法), the act should be revised within three years to improve personal data protection.
Health authorities have not clearly stipulated the procedures for the use, organization, deletion, termination and withdrawal of information in the health insurance database, which violated laws on personal-data retention,
RESEARCH: The Constitutional Court cited the lack of an independent monitoring mechanism to ensure data protection under the National Health Insurance ActBy Wu Cheng-feng and William Hetherington / Staff reporter, with staff writer
A judgement on whether third-party use of the National Health Insurance’s (NHI) data archives is constitutional has been delayed for two months, the Constitutional Court said on Thursday.
The constitutional interpretation would have profound ramifications that could affect the entire country, so it needed more time to debate the issue, the court said.
It cited Article 26, Paragraph 2 of the Constitutional Court Procedure Act (憲法訴訟法), which states that the court “must pronounce its decision within three months after the closing of oral argument,” but the “time limit for pronouncement may be extended by two months when necessary.”
In 2012, then-Taiwan Association for
The Constitutional Court is on April 26 to hear arguments on whether the National Health Insurance Administration (NHIA) has breached the privacy of individuals by allowing third parties to access the National Health Insurance (NHI) database for research purposes.
In a letter written to the agency in 2012, former Taiwan Association of Human Rights secretary-general Tsai Chi-hsun (蔡季勳) and other civic group representatives objected to the third-party use of their personal data stored in the NHI system.
The data should not be used for businesses that were irrelevant to the system, they said.
The agency replied that it manages the