Your general practitioner records information about you and your health in the medical record. This information is primarily kept to ensure the best possible care for you. If your general practitioner participates in the Intego network, some data is also used for scientific research. Researchers use this data to map diseases and improve their management. The research is conducted in the public interest to increase knowledge and understanding that benefits society (directly or indirectly).
This means that your doctor sends information about you to the Academic Center for General Practice (ACHG) of KU Leuven in collaboration with the service healthdata.be, part of the Scientific Institute of Public Health (Sciensano). This is done in an encoded manner so that you are not identifiable, neither to ACHG nor to Sciensano. The data collected by Intego can be consulted at https://www.healthdata.be/dcd/#/collections. Your data is stored in the Intego database for up to 30 years after your death.
The Intego data is analyzed by researchers from ACHG – KU Leuven and researchers working on the Intego project within an inter-university collaboration. Reports are made with this data for the government and public health, for example, to map increases or decreases in infectious diseases. With the results, campaigns can be set up to prevent further spread of diseases. For example, the geographical coordinates of your address will be used securely for analyses in the context of the study "surveillance of environment-related morbidity."
In the public interest, the Intego database can also provide aggregated data to commercial partners such as pharmaceutical companies (with the aim of optimizing services and products). The commercial partners do not get direct access to the data and do not receive data that can be traced back to individuals. The scientific reports made at their request are also made public on the Intego website afterward.
You have the right to view and have your transmitted data adjusted. You also have the right to refuse that ACHG, in collaboration with healthdata.be, collects your data in the Intego database. You can contact your general practitioner for this.
The communication of the encoded personal data was authorized by the health department of the Sectoral Committee of Social Security and Health (SCSZG) with reference number SCSZG/13/079 in deliberation 13/026 of March 13, 2013, last amended on March 20, 2018, and reference number 18/176 in deliberation 18/079 of July 3, 2018, last amended on May 7, 2019. The SCSZG is part of the Commission for the Protection of Privacy ("Privacy Commission"). For any use of personal data not yet described, a new application must be submitted to the Privacy Commission.
The approvals can be found on the Privacy Commission's website: www.privacycommission.be.
If you have any questions or comments about this, you can always bring them up with your general practitioner.