Abstract/Résumé/Resumen
The Law on Access to Information has impacts on the archives and their administration, specially in health institutions which bear information about the patients, and all the larger community: the public served by the health activities, the agents who deliver the services, as well as the whole Health Scientific community. The LAI imposed the challenge of balancing the right to access information with the right to privacy for patients. This paper presents the results of the field research carried out in health nstitutions, in order to appraise the current situation of their archives, more specifically the medical records of patients, and to learn how the access to information files occur in these services. The aim was to analyze the archival services and the procedures to access information in the health institutions of the State of Rio de Janeiro, specifically the patients’ medical records, with the purpose of checking if there was any influence of the LAI on these institutions, and if some changes occurred in their archival environment, if compared to the situation prior to the passing of the law, and investigate how the guaranties of the right to information and the right to privacy are processed in the context of the medical records of patients, as a result of the LAI.
