A Comparative Study of Access Analysis Service Utilization on Japanese Medical Institutions' Websites with GDPR-Compliant Cases.

ABSTRACT

The browsing history of a medical institution's website can potentially reveal or identify information about the health condition of the website visitor through browser cookies and fingerprints. In Japan, although the Personal Information Protection Law was revised in April 2022, the use of access analysis services to collect browsing history on medical institution websites has not been investigated. Therefore, this study investigates the actual usage of access analysis services on Japanese medical institution websites and compares it with the current situation in France, which follows the General Data Protection Regulation. The results revealed that the larger the size of the hospital, the higher the percentage of adoption of access analytics services in Japan. However, the implementation of a system for obtaining consent for the use of access analysis in Japan was found to be poor compared to that of French medical institutions. While access analysis tools are used in the websites of several medical institutions in Japan, the implementation of the process of obtaining consent to acquire browsing history is poor.