How Shall I Write to My Patient? Data Protection in Digital Communication

Abstract

Digital communication is omnipresent. In everyday life, social messenger apps are very popular. Thus, for some patients1 it seems intuitive to use such media to correspond with their professional therapists as well. From a practical perspective, this seems to be advantageous for the therapists themselves. However, this should not lead us to overlook the problems of such platforms, especially issues with data protection. In spite of the legally binding rollout of a safe communication route for therapeutic and medical services in Germany (the so-called “Telematik-Infrastruktur”), so far, there is no unproblematic communication platform for therapists and their patients. Special messenger apps, which explicitly do not store metadata, seem to be the least problematic besides classic phone calls or letters. However, they are not yet widely used. This paper aims to sensitize psychotherapists for their responsibility and to demonstrate technical options, which need to be weighed carefully in order to maximize data protection of digital communication in therapeutic practice.