Criminal law aspect of protecting patients’ medical data

The article examines the criminal law protection of patients’ medical data in the context of healthcare digitalization and the expanding circulation of medical information. The study substantiates the autonomous position of medical data within the system of criminal law protection objects, emphasizing their heightened sensitivity and direct connection to the right to privacy. Special and general provisions of the Criminal Code of Ukraine aimed at safeguarding confidential medical information are analyzed, including Articles 132, 145, 182, 361, 362, and 366, with particular attention paid to issues of normative inconsistency and competition in law enforcement practice. The paper focuses on the criminal law characterization of medical secrecy as both an element of professional duty and an independent object of criminal law protection. It is argued that the current criminal legislation lacks a coherent and systematic framework for protecting patients’ medical data, resulting in fragmented regulation and inconsistent qualification of criminal offenses. The necessity of conceptual clarification of the object of criminal law protection of medical data and the improvement of regulatory approaches in line with contemporary challenges of digital healthcare is substantiated. The distinction between criminally punishable attacks on patients’ medical data requires taking into account the nature of access to information, the method of its use or disclosure, the subject matter of the offense, and the real consequences for the exercise of an individual’s right to privacy and medical confidentiality. Criminal legal protection of medical data is implemented mainly through general structures for the protection of personal information and through institutions of professional liability, which does not take into account the specifics of medical information as a type of data with an increased risk of causing significant non-pecuniary harm to the patient. The lack of regulatory specification of the limits of criminal liability for violating the confidentiality regime of medical data creates the prerequisites for competition between criminal law norms and unequal interpretation of the elements of a criminal offense.