Subiros, Marion
Brottet, Elise
Solet, Jean-Louis
LeGuen, Armelle
Filleul, Laurent
Article History
Received: 20 August 2018
Accepted: 1 March 2019
First Online: 12 March 2019
Authors’ information
: Not applicable.
: According to French law, only research involving a human being (research defined by article L. 1121–1 and article R. 1121–1 of the Code de la santé publique) are compelled to receive the approval of ethics committee. This study was based both on a national surveillance information system (led by the French public health agency and authorized by the CNIL (authorization 1,691,388 SurSaUd)) and anonymous data collected from networks of health professionals: for being based anonymous data, those processing did not require an authorization. Therefore, it was not qualified as a research involving a human being and did not require the approval of an ethic committee.
: The French public health agency is legally missioned to watch the health of French population by implementing information systems collecting health data (L. 1413–1 code de la santé Publique). One of its duty is to prevent, to alert the emergence of epidemics and, when it happens, to monitor them. To this end, the French law compels the health professionals to give (L. 1413–7 code de la santé publique), in conditions compliant with the dispositions of the code de la santé Publique and, when involving personal data, approved by the French data protection Authority (Commission nationale informatique et libertés), the data required by the agency to lead its missions. For being based on anonymous data it also did not require an authorization from the French data protection authority.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
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