PIPEDA Awareness Raising Tools (PARTs) Initiative For The Health Sector

Glossary of Terms

NOTICE: This document is an administrative tool to assist in understanding PIPEDA. It is not intended as legal advice.

Circle of Care

The expression includes the individuals and activities related to the care and treatment of a patient. Thus, it covers the health care providers who deliver care and services for the primary therapeutic benefit of the patient. It also covers related activities such as laboratory work and professional or case consultation with other health care providers.

Commercial Activity

A commercial activity involves the making and provision of a product or providing a service that is commercial in nature. Under PIPEDA, commercial activities also include the selling, leasing, trading or sharing for some consideration, donor, membership or other fundraising lists.

Confidentiality

Confidentiality is defined as the obligations of one person to preserve the secrecy of another's personal information.

Consent

For the purposes of PIPEDA, consent is voluntary agreement or authorization from a patient/client, or his/her legally authorized representative, to collect, use, retain, disclose, and retain his/her own personal health information.

Disclosure

Disclosure is the transfer or release of personal information to a third party.

Express Consent

For the purposes of PIPEDA, express consent means that verbal or written permission or authorization has been obtained from the patient for the collection, use or disclosure of his/her own personal health information. Express consent is indisputable.

Health Organization

A health organization is any organization engaged in the planning, funding, management, manufacture, or delivery of health services and products.

Implied Consent

For the purposes of PIPEDA, implied consent is consent that can be reasonably inferred from the action (or inaction) of a patient who has been informed of his/her privacy rights.

Knowledge

Knowledge is achieved when the individual is informed about what information is being collected about them, the purpose of that information collection, and how the information will be used, retained, disclosed and retained.

Organization

For the purposes of PIPEDA, an organization includes: associations, partnerships, persons, trade unions, agencies, institutions, and health care providers in private practice.

Personal Information

Personal information includes any factual or subjective information, recorded or not, about a particular individual that makes that individual identifiable.

Primary Purpose

Primary purpose means the collection, use and disclosure of information for the purpose(s) for which it was collected, for example; the provision of care and treatment of the patient.

Privacy

Privacy is the right of individuals to be left alone, and to determine when, how, and to what extent they share information about themselves with others.

Reasonable Person

The concept of "reasonable person" is intended to ensure that personal information is only collected, used or disclosed for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances. The reasonable person test is contextual and objective.

Research

Research is defined as a class of activities that have as their purpose the creation of, or contribution to, generalizable scientific knowledge, based on theories and principles that can be corroborated by commonly accepted scientific methods of observation, inference and/or experiment.

Retention

Retention refers to the process of conserving data or information in a secure or intact manner, usually for a defined period of time, after which it may be destroyed.

Review

A review is defined as a series of activities whose primary purpose is to provide a retrospective assessment or analysis to assist in making judgements about the appropriateness, safety, quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of care and treatment.

Secondary Purpose

Secondary purpose refers to the use of information for a purpose other than that for which it was originally collected.

Security

Security refers to the procedures and systems used to restrict access, and to protect and maintain the integrity of information.

Third Party

Third party refers to any individual or organization that is not the patient/client, the original collector/provider of information, or the organization where a patient/client is directly seeking care/treatment/services.