Your Health Record: Consent and Who Can See It

Your health record says a great deal about you: your illnesses, your medication, your test results, sometimes things you have told no one else. It should be easy for the people caring for you to see it — and hard for anyone else.

This guide explains, in plain language, how consent works on OpesCare: who can open your record, what you are asked, what you can refuse, what happens in an emergency, and how you can check who has looked.

The principle: access is a decision, not a default

Many systems work the other way round: once you are registered somewhere, anyone with a login can open your file. On OpesCare, having a Health ID does not let any facility read your record. Access has to be justified every time.

Who can see your record

You

You can always see your own record — visits, results, prescriptions, immunisations, referrals and documents — on the web or in the mobile app.

Clinicians with a care relationship

A clinician can open your record when they are actually involved in your care. OpesCare checks for one of these:

• you have an appointment with them;
• they are on your care team;
• they are your treating clinician;
• you have an open episode of care at their facility (for example, you are being seen there today).

Clinicians you have given consent to

If none of the above applies, the clinician must ask. You receive a consent request, and only if you approve can they read the part of the record you agreed to.

People who cannot see it

• Staff with no care relationship and no consent.
• Staff at another facility. Access across facilities is refused.
• Anyone trying to find you by name. There is no name search: staff need your exact Health ID or your QR code.

What a consent request tells you

A consent request is designed to answer four questions before you decide:

1. Who is asking? The clinician and the facility.
2. Why do they need it? The stated purpose.
3. What data, exactly? The scope of the record requested.
4. For how long? The duration of the access.

Then you choose: approve, deny, or approve now and revoke later. You receive the request in the app, with a notification.

Approving

Approve when you recognise the clinician and the reason makes sense. Approval is limited to the scope and duration shown.

Denying

You may deny. Denying a request does not stop a facility from treating you; it means that clinician does not see your past record through OpesCare. Tell the clinician what they need to know in person if you prefer.

Revoking

You can revoke a grant at any time from your consent list. Revoking stops future access under that grant. It does not delete what was already written in your record — clinical entries are never deleted, only corrected or voided with a trail.

Your access log

Every time someone opens your record, it is recorded. In your access log you can see who accessed it, from which facility, when, and on what basis — appointment, care team, consent or emergency.

Check it from time to time. If you see an access you do not recognise, contact us and raise it with the facility.

Emergencies: break-glass access

Sometimes you cannot give consent — you are unconscious, or the situation is too urgent. For this, OpesCare has break-glass access:

• it opens only a limited emergency profile: identity, blood group, allergies, active conditions and an emergency contact;
• the clinician must state a reason;
• you are alerted;
• the access is reviewed afterwards.

This balance — enough information to keep you safe, not your whole history — is deliberate.

Your privacy switches

In your privacy settings you have switches that control how much of your record can be shown and whether break-glass access is allowed. Think carefully before turning emergency access off: in a real emergency, your blood group and allergies can matter.

Three everyday scenarios

A first visit to a new clinic

You book an appointment with a doctor at a clinic you have never visited. Because you have an appointment, the doctor can open your record for your care. The access appears in your log as "appointment". You did not have to approve anything extra — the appointment is the care relationship.

A specialist who wants your past results

Your doctor refers you to a specialist at another hospital. Before your visit, the specialist wants to review your past laboratory results. They have no appointment with you yet, so they send a consent request: who they are, why they need it ("review before cardiology consultation"), which data (laboratory results), and for how long (for example, 30 days). You approve. After 30 days, the access ends on its own.

A request you do not recognise

You receive a request from a clinician at a facility you have never heard of. Deny it. Then check your access log and, if anything looks wrong, contact us. Requests you deny are not shown the data.

What consent does not cover

Consent on OpesCare controls who can read your record through OpesCare. A few things work differently:

• What you say in the consulting room is recorded by the clinician in the normal way; it becomes part of your record.
• A facility's own internal system, if it has one, follows that facility's rules and the law. OpesCare does not control software it does not run.
• Aggregate statistics that facilities report — for example to the national DHIS2 — are counts, not your personal record.

Family members and guardians

Children and some dependent adults cannot manage consent themselves. On OpesCare, a guardian — usually a parent or carer — can be linked to a dependent and act on their behalf, including responding to consent requests, from a guardian dashboard and inbox. Guardians can sign up at the guardian registration page or link from their own account.

Documents you share yourself

When you download a document — a record export, a prescription — it is generated at that moment and carries a verification QR code. Anyone you hand it to can check it is genuine at opescare.com. Once you hand over a paper or PDF, though, its use is up to the person who has it; share only what is needed.

What the law says

Cameroon adopted Law No. 2024/017 of 23 December 2024 on personal data protection, its first standalone data protection law, alongside Law No. 2010/012 on cybersecurity and cybercriminality, which punishes unauthorised access to information systems. Legal commentators describe the new law as giving individuals rights over their personal data and setting conditions for processing it. OpesCare's consent model is designed so that patients can see and control access to their health information. For more, read our data protection guide and our privacy notice.

Why OpesCare chose this model

There is a real tension in health records. Too little access, and a clinician treats you without knowing your allergies. Too much, and your record becomes something anyone at any facility can browse. OpesCare resolves it in three ways:

• Access follows care. If someone is genuinely caring for you — an appointment, a care team, an open episode — they can see what they need without delay.
• Everything else needs your yes. Outside a care relationship, access requires your explicit, scoped and time-limited consent.
• Everything is visible to you. Whatever the basis, the access is in your log.

This is stricter than many paper systems, where a file sits on a shelf that anyone in the building can reach. It is also more practical than asking you to approve every single read by the doctor you are sitting in front of.

Practical tips

• Keep your QR card private in the same way you would a bank card. Show it at the counter, not on social media.
• Read before you approve. Check who is asking and why.
• Set an emergency contact and confirm your blood group and allergies are up to date.
• Check your access log after a hospital visit.
• Use the guardian features for your children rather than sharing your own login.

Conclusion

On OpesCare, your record opens for the people caring for you and stays closed for everyone else. You see every request, you can say no, you can change your mind, and you can check who has looked. In an emergency, only what is needed to keep you safe is shown.

Get your free Health ID and take control of who sees your record. Questions? Visit opescare.com/help.

Related reading: the Health ID, interoperability layer and MPI explained.