[Data protection and data access (II): Physician's responsibility for confidentiality, federal statistics law and data collection by authorization with reference to implementing occupational medicine epidemiologic studies in Germany].

The additional legal rulings governing access to personal data for epidemiological research are the medical professional secrecy regulators and the federal statistics law. These permit access to personal data only if the individual has given his or her informed constant. Beyond this, both laws contain clauses governing the transfer of anonymous data for research and science. Thus anonymized data may be transferred on request to authorized persons or institutions, such as a physician or the regional statistics office. Finally, a custodian model is presented which provides further possibilities for research in occupational medicine and epidemiology within this very restrictive legal framework.