Medical record retention, Code of Medical Ethics, Law 3418/2005 Article 14
A legal minimum of 10 years for private practices, 20 years for clinics, the strictest explicit retention floor of any sector we serve.
Clinics & Practices
Compliance for clinics and medical practices
Healthcare carries the densest overlapping digital obligations, and the longest hard legal minimum for record retention.
Legislation
Your obligations
Individual Electronic Health Record (ΑΗΦΥ), Law 4600/2019 Article 84
Requires every doctor keeping a patient file to log examination data in the ΑΗΦΥ. Provides for criminal penalties of up to 10 years' imprisonment and €50,000 for unlawful access.
Special category data, GDPR Article 9
Health data requires enhanced safeguards beyond ordinary personal data.
E-prescribing, Law 3892/2010, Law 4600/2019 Article 90, Law 4812/2021 Article 78
Mandatory for doctors and pharmacies contracted with insurance funds, extended to narcotics and the Electronic Narcotics Register.
Enforcement
Recent enforcement
Three cases that show exactly what the Hellenic DPA checks in your sector:
Hellenic DPA Decision 36/2022, €30,000
Fine against a diagnostic centre for losing mammography images, the device only kept them locally for three months. Exactly the failure managed backup prevents.
Hellenic DPA Decision 11/2025, €5,000
Fine against an IVF/maternity doctor for unauthorised access to a former patient's electronic record.
Hellenic DPA Decision 37/2024, €15,000
Fine against a doctor for using hospital patients' phone numbers in a political SMS campaign.
The Fix
How ArvaSafe covers this
- Retention configurable per client, defaulting to 10 years, clinics can request an extension to 20 years at onboarding to meet the Law 3418/2005 minimum
- Special-category data clause (GDPR Article 9) built into the Data Processing Agreement
- Immutable storage (Object Lock), exactly the protection that would have prevented Decision 36/2022
- EU-only storage, encrypted before upload, with GDPR Article 32 documentation
Sources