Confidentiality; research – Ohio Admin. Code 3701-4-03

“Confidentiality; research”

Any information, data, and reports with respect to a case of malignant disease that are furnished to or procured by any cancer registry in Ohio or the department of health will be confidential.  Information concerning individual cancer patients obtained by the department of health is for the confidential use of the department, except the department of health may release information about an individual in the following circumstances:

• To physicians for diagnostic and treatment purposes if the patient’s attending physician and the patient give consent to the release;
• To the cancer registry of another state, if the other state has entered into a reciprocal agreement with the department providing that the state will comply with the confidentiality requirements of the system and will not release information identifying a patient to any person without the written consent of the patient;
• For statistical, scientific, and medical research for the purposes of reducing the morbidity or mortality of malignant disease, if the person conducting the research provides written information about the purpose of the research purpose of the research project, the nature of the data to be collected and how the researcher intends to analyze it, the records the researcher seeks to review, and the safeguards the researcher will take to protect the identity of patients.

Verification of the credentials of all individuals involved in conducting the research is submitted;

• The proposed safeguards are adequate to protect the identity of each patient;
• An agreement is executed specifying the terms of the researcher’s use of the records and prohibits the publication or release of the names of individual cancer patients or any facts tending to lead to the identification of individual cancer patients;
• The project has clearly defined goals that pertain to cancer prevention and control;
• The research design of case control studies involves a sufficiently large sample size that any meaningful difference between cases and controls will be statistically significant.
• The research project provides enough cases for meaningful analysis of the data for identification of potential risk factors and intervention strategies for cancer prevention and control; and
• The project will be conducted at a medical research institution by competent researchers.
• The name of individual cancer patients may be used by approved researchers to request additional information for research purposes or soliciting a patient’s participation in a research project. 

The release to any person of epidemiological information that does not identify individual cancer patients is permissible.