Personal information is any recorded information about an identifiable person. This can be as simple as your name and address. As a rule of thumb, if the information identifies you, is not otherwise publicly available and identifies something about you, it is likely personal information.

Personal health information is a subset of personal information that relates to information provided or generated in the delivery of a health service. It includes information about your physical or mental health, any health services provided to you, your health services number and any other information about you collected incidentally to a health service provided to you.

Both privacy statutes provide exemptions to the above general definitions of personal information and personal health information. For a complete list of what is included or excluded in the definition for these terms, please see section 24 of The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act and clause 2(m) of The Health Information Protection Act. For the purposes of this web page, the term “personal information” includes both personal information and personal health information.