Project No. 65(II)

Commenced: 1987
Completed: 1990

The Health Department had become increasingly concerned that the developing law of confidentiality would unduly restrict or obstruct medical research in Western Australia. Unlike the legislation of the Commonwealt2 and some other Australian states3 there is no specific statutory provision in Western Australia regulating the use of medical records for research purposes.

Given the absence of statutory authority, it was feared that a hospital’s disclosure of medical records to a researcher, in a form that identified individual patients, was a breach of a legal duty of confidence. The breach would only be avoided if the patients had consented to the disclosure. Researchers claimed that in many cases it was impracticable to obtain such patient consent.