By Tim Welch
Patient rights continues to be an issue of global concern due to the rapidly expanding field of biotechnology. As genetics become more involved in the treatment of disease and electronic medical records raise challenges for privacy, the law must evolve to ensure patient protection.
A webpage run by the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Law at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium) provides a substantial resource for information about European laws related to patient rights. The webpage, located at http://www.europatientrights.eu, includes information about the status of the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine (Biomedicine Convention) in each EU Member State, as well as individual countries' laws regarding patients' rights to informed consent, information about health, access to medical files, privacy, and use of genetic services.
The webpage is laid out in an easy-to-use "one-click" format. The web user begins at the homepage and may click through to different areas of concern related to European patient rights legislation, including "General Overview," "Biomedicine Convention," "EU Member States," and "Types of Patient Rights Legislation." These links bring the web user to other internal webpages that contain either a large diagram to break down information further or a descriptive text with sidebar links. The diagrams are easy to read and require only "one-click" on any section of the diagram to bring up the desired detailed information.
An example of this "one-click" diagram format is the "General Overview" page. The "General Overview" page displays a large diagram with links to topics about the Biomedicine Convention across the top, flags of the 27 EU Member States down the sides and across the bottom, and the types of legislation in the middle. The user may click anywhere on this diagram once to bring up the relevant information. By clicking on any one of the flags, the user can find a detailed description of that country's status regarding ratification of the Biomedicine Convention, as well as patient rights legislation in that country's national legislature.
While this webpage provides a wealth of information on European laws regarding patient rights and is easily navigable, it would be stronger if the web user had the option to search the countries' laws by topic. Instead of having to click on each individual country to access that country's laws, the site should have a search function to allow the web user to find at once, for example, all laws related to informed consent.