Doctors from the Portuguese Institute of Oncology of Porto (IPO) received communications directly from a company external to the unit “Question Resolved”on March 5th, despite not having authorized the use or transmission of their emails for this purpose. The email was received with the automatic system warning: “Sender from an external source to the SNS/MS corporate email system”. All this happened, according to complaints from the Northern Doctors Union (SMN), without “prior consent from those targeted and without clarification on the legal framework of this decision”.
In a statement sent this Monday morning, March 16, to newsrooms, the SMN states that it has already demanded “additional explanations to the Porto IPO” and has presented “participation to the National Data Protection Commission (CNPD)”.
As explained in the same note, the union structure has already requested the Board of Directors of the Porto IPO “the contract or legal instrument for hiring the company; the administrative decision that approved this hiring; the possible authorization from the guardianship or the Executive Directorate of the SNS; the scope of the company’s intervention in the Public Administration Assessment and Performance System (SIADAP) process” to determine the basis for the decision to send the emails to external companies, but “so far the Porto IPO has not provided the requested clarifications, as determined the law.”
In the complaint, the SMN recalls that “the transmission of identifying data from doctors — even in the professional context — to external entities must respect the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and Law No. 58/2019, namely the principles of necessity, proportionality and purpose limitation”.
The same situation has already been made known to the Executive Directorate of the National Health Service (DE-SNS) and the Central Administration of the Health System (ACSS), so that they can comment on this and so that they can “intervene institutionally”.
For the union, “the conditions are not met for doctors to authorize the disclosure of their e-mails to external entities, and several doctors are submitting formal declarations of refusal to disclose their e-mails and personal data without prior consent”, adding that “it will continue to monitor this situation and will not fail to act whenever the rights of doctors, administrative legality and respect for data protection rules are at stake”.
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