India to be first to protect health data of citizens with iron-clad law?

The responsibility for ensuring data security and privacy would lie with the entity that has custody of the data

India’s health ministry has proposed a law to govern data security in the healthcare sector that would give individuals complete ownership of their health data. Individuals would have the absolute right to refuse or allow data to be generated, collected, accessed, transmitted or used. And data collectors such as hospitals would be prohibited from refusing treatment to those who do not want their data collected or used.

This would make India one of the world’s foremost jurisdictions in the regulation of healthcare data, at a time when governments around the world are scrambling to