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PIPEDA Safeguards

Satisfactory Essays

The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act is part of the Canadian Privacy Law and establishes principles for the collection, use, and disclosure of personal and identifiable information that is part of commercial activity (e.g. physician practice's, pharmacies, private labs, pharmaceutical companies).
The principle of Consent states that the knowledge and consent of individuals are required when an organization collects, uses, or discloses personal information, and it must be in such a way that the individual clearly understands. The principle of Safeguards states that the organization must protect personal information against loss or theft as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification. The level of security should be …show more content…

PIPEDA requires obtaining consent for the collection of personal and identifiable information, informing study subjects of their privacy rights and providing them with an opportunity to know what personal information is being collected, for what purpose, how it will be used, disclosed, and protected. The subject' s rights to confidentiality (in compliance with PIPEDA) while participating in a clinical trial is also covered in the informed consent.

Failure to protect subject’s personal information, is an example of not complying the above two principles in the research industry. Researchers are in a position of dealing with a great deal of very personal information that their participants have agreed to disclose. Depending on the type of study, personal identifiers such as names, birthdates, places of residence etc. may or may not have to be collected. In situations where these data are collected, researchers may take several steps to ensure the confidentiality of their participants’

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