By Nikhil Pahwa and Aditi Agrawal The risks are too great, the use cases are too unclear, and a broad Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, does not adequately take into account the concerns of the healthcare sector. Doctors speaking at MediaNama's discussion on the impact of the PDP Bill on the healthcare sector held on June 19, 2020, felt that there needs to be a different, sectoral approach to protect healthcare data. This discussion was supported by Microsoft, Google, TMT Law Practice and the Telemedicine Society of India. A wish list from our participants: A sector specific bill for healthcare: Dr Sunil Shroff, President (TN), Telemedicine Society of India, felt that the healthcare sector at this time, needs a bill which is just for healthcare, as far as data protection is concerned. The heterogeneity of the healthcare sector can only be addressed through a separate legislation. For instance, Dr Varun Gupta, Vice President of Medical Affairs and Public Policy at 1mg, said that there are companies that are not hospitals or clinics, but partner with multiple players in the ecosystem; any legislation needs to look at those allied roles. Graded compliance requirements for different players in the ecosystem: Different players in the ecosystem, such as a large hospital, a standalone diabetes clinic, and an aggregation platform like 1mg, have varying abilities to meet all the requirements of the Bill. For instance, maintaining medical records for a small clinic is very difficult. Ensuring right to data portability of patients/data principals will imply…
