AtlacareWhen a patient exercises their right to erasure (the "right to be forgotten") under UK or EU GDPR, Atlacare's job is to help you honour it without deleting records you're legally required to keep. It does this with retention-aware anonymisation.
The important thing to understand first
The right to erasure is not absolute. Where you have a legal obligation to retain clinical or financial records, that obligation overrides an erasure request until the retention period ends. Atlacare enforces this for you: a patient's clinical records cannot be erased until their retention period has passed, calculated from their last treatment date and their country's rules. See How do retention periods work?
What erasure does in Atlacare
Erasure in Atlacare anonymises rather than hard-deletes. Personal identifiers — name, contact details, date of birth, address, emergency contact, GP, and free-text notes — are cleared, while the underlying appointment and financial structure is kept so your accounts and audit trail stay intact. The action is written to the audit log, recording the country and retention period applied.
The practical steps
- Verify the request. Confirm the person is who they say they are before acting.
- Check retention. If the patient's records are still within the retention window, you generally cannot erase yet — you can explain this to the patient, citing your legal obligation.
- Archive in the meantime. From the patient's profile you can archive the record, removing it from day-to-day lists.
- Erase once eligible. When the retention period has passed, the record can be anonymised so no personal data remains.
What patients should do
Patients don't request erasure through Atlacare — they ask their clinic. Atlacare, the software vendor, never receives these requests directly.
This describes how the platform works, not legal advice. For a specific case, check with your supervisory authority (the ICO in the UK) or your professional body. Feature questions? Use the Help button.