In response to Constitutional Court Judgment No. 13 (2022) and to uphold data autonomy, the NHIA announced that, starting August 12, individuals may request to stop secondary use of their NHI data. The Court affirmed the public value of NHI data, which has supported over 9,000 research papers and numerous graduate theses in public health, policy evaluation, and academic studies. To respect data autonomy before the NHI Data Management Act is enacted, the NHIA has issued interim guidelines for applications to halt secondary data use.
To ensure data security and privacy, the NHIA stated that NHI data is limited to academic research and public interest purposes, with the following safeguards in place:
- Approval by an Institutional Review Board (IRB) and competent authority.
- Data access only at designated sites with independent storage and computing facilities.
- Personal data must be de-identified.
- Rare case data is not available for use.
- Only statistical results may be taken out; unapproved raw data may not be removed.
For details on the application process, please visit the NHIA official website or call the service hotline at 0800-030-598.