u-헬스 서비스(ubiquitous-Health Care)의 보편화 경향과 개인건강정보보호법제 방향

With rapid development of informatization, scope of security-related threats, such as cyber violation or personal information leakage, etc. and the consequential damages, is becoming further expanded. This implies that, although environment for information and communications is rapidly changing, such as through full scale implementation of broadband convergence network (BcN) and ubiquitous sensor network (USN), there are realistic limitations in effectively and systematically handling the reverse functions of informatization possible to occur in the ubiquitous era. However, the legal system for information protection in Korea is being evaluated to fall significantly behind the speed of information technology and service development. Therefore, national improvement of the standard of information protection has already become the most important task among all of the government's IT policies. This would also apply to the fields of ubiquitous-health service. Laws of Korea that are related to personal information protection are serving their roles in individual fields of information and communications, finance and e-commerce, etc. However, these laws have not been systematically organized. The scope of regulation has not been clarified, either. Also, without general laws in relation to personal information, there are problems that even the urgent matters, such as exposure of blind spot for law application, risk in user identification by resident registration number and insufficiency in personal information impact assessment system, etc., are not being properly handled. The most urgent task for protection against violation of personal information and health information in accordance with generalization of ubiquitous-health service is the establishment of personal information protection act as a general law. Based on this, establishment of health information protection act as a special law of personal information protection act must be promoted. However, on the other hand, achieving establishment of health information protection act in the quickest time without reserve would not be the complete solution. The health information protection act which does not reflect a comprehensive and accurate understanding on ubiquitous-health care environment will inevitably degrade into an excessive or imperfect means of restriction. Governmental execution of guidelines in relation to technology standards, security bases and application of protection technology, etc. on health information system can also be the foundation for establishment of health information protection act.