Privacy compliance can lead to complex issues. This is especially true in healthcare. First of all, healthcare inevitably processes large amounts of sensitive (personal) data to which a heavier protection regime applies. Second, in addition to the General Data Protection Regulation (AVG), specific national laws and regulations apply that affect the lawful processing of (personal) data in healthcare.

The purpose of this book is to provide an overview of the major privacy issues involved in (somatic) health care. The book is intended for people with a professional interest in privacy in healthcare. Attempts have been made to make the book not only a useful reference work for lawyers or data protection officers (FGs) in healthcare, but also to provide healthcare providers and managers in healthcare without a legal background with a good overview of privacy law issues facing every healthcare facility.

The authors deal with privacy law from different perspectives in their daily work: as lawyers in a hospital, as privacy and IT consultants and as lawyers in IT and privacy law. An attempt has been made to make the authors' experience part of the book through practical examples and also through a case study that runs as a thread through the chapters.

The creation of the book has been an intensive process. The relatively rapid development of laws and regulations and in case law necessitated regular updates of parts already completed. The content of the book was finalized at the end of April 2022, developments after that time are therefore not included.

A golden mean between depth and accessibility has been sought. Some of the issues addressed are complex and have no clear-cut answer. The authors hope that solutions and suggestions offered will make a positive contribution to the development of privacy law in healthcare.