Legally binding privacy guidelines and rules

The Guidelines under section 95 of the Privacy Act 1988 (2014) have been issued by the National Health and Medical Research Council with the approval of the Privacy Commissioner. They outline requirements for the protection of privacy in the conduct of medical research.

Note that these guidelines were updated in November 2014 to address minor formatting and content errors in the previous version dated 12 March 2014.

The Guidelines approved under Section 95A of the Privacy Act 1988 (2014) (Section 95A guidelines) provide a framework for human research ethics committees to assess proposals to handle health information (without the consent of the subject). This handling is for the purposes of research, the compilation or analysis of statistics, or health service management. The Section 95A guidelines also require that ethics committees weigh the public interest in those activities against the public interest in the protection of privacy.

Use and disclosure of genetic information to a patient's genetic relatives under s 95AA of the Privacy Act: Guidelines for health practitioners in the private sector (2014) has been issued by the National Health and Medical Research Council with the approval of the Privacy Commissioner.