Legislation
Basis for THL’s statistics and registers
The duties and competence of THL is defined in the Act on the National Institute for Health and Welfare (668/2008). The Act provides that one of the THL’s duties is to function as a statistical authority, as referred to in the Statistics Act (280/2004), and to maintain statistics and registers in the field.
- Act on the National Institute for Health and Welfare (668/2008)
- Statistics Act (280/2004) (in Finnish)
Collection of statistics and register data
The National Institute for Health and Welfare collects statistics and register data mainly for carrying out the institute's statutory duties. THL also uses the collected data for it's duties as statitistical authority, producing statistics, evaluating service system and carrying out research.
THL stores and manages all collected data confidentially following obligation to maintain secrecy and regulation on data protection. The social and health care authorities, institutions and professionals are obligated to give the information referred in legislation to THL.
Confidential data and data protection
Data collected for statistics and registers are confidential. Persons taking part in data processing have the obligation to observe secrecy, and the data is secured against unauthorised access in all phases of statistics production. Data protection requirements for central government have been specified by the Data Protection Decree (681/2010).
