[Legal aspects of copyright and data protection in the use of pathology images on social media].

Authors

Carola Sieling, Mareike Julia von Petersdorff-Campen

Published in

Pathologie (Heidelberg, Germany). Jun 04, 2025. Epub Jun 04, 2025.

Abstract

Because of digitalization in pathology, more and more patient images are being used outside of the patient file.
What copyright and data protection aspects in the German legal area must be considered when using images from pathology on social media?
Research and analysis of the legal basis in German copyright and data protection law.
German legislation provides clear guidelines regarding authorship and the rights to use images. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is particularly strict when it comes to handling health data. According to some voices, anonymization is not only difficult to implement in the age of digitalization and increasing networking and processing of data, but it is also unclear when exactly anonymization has taken place. However, one thing is certain: anonymized data do not fall under the GDPR.
When publishing images from pathology on social media, data protection law must be observed in particular, since the data in question are health data and thus personal data that are particularly worthy of protection. Without anonymization, it is necessary to obtain patient consent that complies with data protection regulations. Furthermore, copyright aspects must be considered for images from pathology as photographic works.

PMID:
40464900
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 05 Jun 2025.

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