Can I refuse access to or sharing of my NEHR records?

If you do not want any healthcare professional to access your health record, you can choose to restrict access to your NEHR records. Once access is restricted, healthcare professionals must not access your NEHR records even for care purposes.

However, the healthcare professional may choose to override the access restriction to provide you with life-saving treatment during a medical emergency.

In such a scenario, the healthcare professional must first determine the following:

1. Your life is at risk of immediate and significant harm unless medical intervention is provided, and

2. You are unable to provide consent (e.g. in cases of comatose).

The two criteria must be fulfilled before the healthcare professional can decide to override the access restriction using the Emergency Access Only function. They must also provide a reason for overriding the access restriction.

The healthcare professional will not be able to access your NEHR records if you have the capacity to provide consent and refuse access despite it being a medical emergency.

Mock up of the Emergency Access Only function, i.e., what your healthcare professional sees

MOH will audit cases where your access restriction is overridden by the healthcare professional. Healthcare professionals who misuse the Emergency Access Only function may be subject to legal penalties under the HIB and possible further disciplinary action from the respective professional bodies, such as the Singapore Medical Council.

What happens after I exercise my restriction rights?

While healthcare professionals will be blocked from accessing your NEHR records, the background contribution of selected health information to NEHR will continue. This ensures that there will be no gaps in your NEHR record if you choose to remove the access restriction in future.

The ability to place access restrictions on your NEHR records is intended to uphold your autonomy and privacy. Hence, once you restrict access to your NEHR records, the following will occur:

1. Access to your NEHR records is restricted for all purposes, including for patient care, medical examinations, and research purposes;

2. You will not be able to participate in national programmes such as HealthierSG, as these programmes require sharing of your health information to be carried out effectively.

However, you can still check the NEHR Access History in HealthHub, and be notified if your NEHR records have been accessed, including through the Emergency Access Only function.

Currently, access restriction also blocks your ability to use HealthHub to view your own NEHR information. To allow you to monitor and track your own medical care and health plans, MOH will reconfigure HealthHub to bypass the access restrictions and draw your NEHR information (except Sensitive Health Information). However, some time will be required for HealthHub to make these changes.

If you wish to exercise you rights to restrict access, more details on the process are available in the FAQs by Synapxe.