Policy, Legislation, and Ethics

Data protection law is the main field of research in this respect. Questions concerning intellectual rights to the content of the ePortfolio are also addressed.

This work package brings pressing legal questions to light and tries to analyze them in an applied way. After all, the aim is to develop an ePortfolio that complies with the applicable legislative frameworks.

During the first part of the project, the focus was on respect for privacy within ePortfolio. We looked at some issues concerning data protection law and criminal professional secrecy:

1. Who is responsible for the processing of personal data within the SCAFFOLD ePortfolio? Identifying this actor is of fundamental importance, as it is responsible for compliance with the obligations of the General Data Protection Regulation to protect the personal data of data subjects.
2. Is it permissible to process personal (health) data within the SCAFFOLD-ePortfolio? More specifically, it was investigated whether there is a valid legal ground on the basis of which the personal data in the SCAFFOLD ePortfolio may be processed for training purposes.
3. Can a data subject validly consent to the processing of his/her personal data for training purposes in the SCAFFOLD ePortfolio? In particular, sufficient attention must be given to the free nature of the consent, so that the applicant does not feel compelled to consent for fear of being treated differently if he/she does not consent. 
4. Is the trainee healthcare provider's professional secrecy violated when using the SCAFFOLD ePortfolio? After all, confidential information shared between the applicant and care provider cannot be circulated without reason by using the SCAFFOLD-ePortfolio. Respect for confidentiality and limiting the people who have access to such information is therefore important.

The SCAFFOLD ePortfolio will inevitably contain sensitive data and confidential information. It is therefore important to carefully secure the ePortfolio. The first thing to consider is how to minimise the inflow and outflow of confidential information into the SCAFFOLD ePortfolio so that the confidentiality of the information is respected without compromising the effective support and quality training of the healthcare provider.

Thus, for each user of the SCAFFOLD-ePortfolio, access to confidential information should be limited to those tasks for which it is indispensable and to those data necessary for their performance.  

To achieve this, these access rights do need to be considered during the design process.

In addition, copyright is also examined. This is done through question and answer, at the end this is then collected in a frequently asked questions document.

AERA (American Educational Research Association) conference, April 2022

Sofie, Clara, Oona, Marieke and Mieke presented the Scaffold project at the annual AERA conference. Our researchers explained various aspects of the Scaffold project. Clara briefly introduced the legal challenges in this project. Read the abstract here: