ASOURCE Times

Exercise facility management rights,
Protect the privacy of patients and staff

As we discussed last time, audio recordings are also personal information in the sense that an individual can be identified by their voiceprint, but photographs and videos that show a person's face make it easier to identify them, so the need to protect this information is even stronger.

You are free to take pictures of yourself at home, but if you are in a facility managed by someone else and the facility manager prohibits you from taking pictures of yourself, you cannot do so freely. However, if it is not explicitly prohibited, people tend to assume that taking pictures is permitted, and people take pictures freely.

Facility managers can decide at their own discretion to photograph only the facilities and staff members that they manage and control within their own facilities. However, due to portrait rights, they cannot consent to photography that includes visitors or other people over whom they have no control without permission.

Filming in a hospital may include information that may affect the patient's confidence or that may touch on the sensitive personal information of others, or may be of a nature that may affect the patient's credibility, so the need to give permission must be determined not just from the perspective of whether or not audio or video recording is permitted, but also from a comprehensive consideration of all circumstances, including the rights of others that are beyond the control of the administrator.

Compared to audio recordings, filming medical professionals is difficult to do without permission due to the nature of the face-to-face nature of the recording, so permission is often requested, but unauthorized filming in which the other person is filmed without their knowledge is not rare on a daily basis. As mentioned above, images are more likely to identify the third party filmed than audio, and there is also a high possibility of violating the rights of the person filmed without permission, so it is not appropriate to accept unauthorized filming even if you do not want to.

The facility manager has management rights, and can therefore impose certain restrictions on the actions of users based on those rights. On the other hand, users have an obligation to follow those instructions. Therefore, based on those management rights, the manager can also restrict visitors from taking photographs or other actions within the facility.

Specifically, it is practical to prohibit unauthorized photography and to ask for prior permission depending on the purpose and nature of the photography. However, as mentioned above, it is not possible to permit photography of those who have portrait rights, so it is necessary to inform them that individual permission must be obtained. For example, the level of permission required differs depending on the nature of the photography, such as in a private room and for TV program coverage, so flexible responses are possible if rules are established taking into consideration the possibility of staff members being captured in the footage.

The expanding online
Formulating rules according to the situation

During the COVID-19 pandemic, needs have changed dramatically, with online medical consultations, explanations of medical conditions, and non-contact interviews such as meetings. Although the other party is limited in all of these cases, the decision is made based on whether medical professionals are to be filmed or not. The Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has issued "Guidelines for the Appropriate Implementation of Online Medical Consultations," which are considered to be official opinions, so let's first consider online medical consultations in which medical professionals are to be filmed.

The guidelines state that "patients should not record, film, or take pictures of video calls without the doctor's consent" as a measure to be taken by patients. In the case of online conversations, there are situations where you may not know if you are being recorded without permission, so you should keep this in mind and be careful about what you say.

Another example of medical professionals not being filmed is online visits. If it is direct communication between the patient and the visitor only, it is unlikely that it would violate the rights of others, so it is a type of communication where recording is easily permitted. However, in the case of multi-bed rooms, it is necessary to avoid filming other patients or staff.

In fact, as long as hospitalized patients have mobile devices, it is virtually impossible to completely restrict communication with outside parties via video apps, so it is realistic to think of it in a similar way. However, when a family member requests the installation of a camera for the purpose of monitoring the situation inside the room when the patient is unconscious or has cognitive impairment and has not consented to being filmed, this should not be treated in a uniform manner, but rather individual circumstances should be considered.

Interviews between doctors and patient families are not necessarily medical procedures, but are somewhere between the aforementioned online medical examinations and online meetings. Since the purpose and frequency of use vary depending on the medical institution, it is recommended that rules be established according to those purposes.

The risks of internet distribution
Anticipating the future is also necessary

We will consider cases where photos and videos taken within the hospital are publicly transmitted, or distributed using a site that allows real-time video transmission.

Unlike photographs taken for personal records, digitizing the images and putting them on a network makes it easy to make them available to the general public, even if they are distributed only to specific individuals, and there is a concern that they could spread in an instant.

For example, recently, a video posted of someone licking a soy sauce dispenser at a restaurant caused a huge outrage as it was deemed to be a crime known as fraudulent obstruction of business, shocking society.

Once something like this happens, social trust will be lost, and the damage could become irreparable. Therefore, it is important for facility managers of medical institutions, who are responsible for the safety of people's lives and bodies, to exercise their management rights appropriately, such as by establishing in-house rules that prohibit unauthorized filming, to prevent such a situation from occurring. Particular care must be taken with regard to real-time public distribution.

Depending on the nature of the medical institution, it may not be necessary to uniformly prohibit all posts, but it is effective to control them by appealing that you are exercising management rights, such as by asking for confirmation in advance. In such a way, you may be able to respond favorably to interviews.

Next time, we will consider cases where medical institutions are the ones recording footage, such as security camera footage and surgery footage.