In their article, Hannah van Kolfschooten, Merel Spaander and Johan Legemaate examine the impact of the ECHR on the position of patients in healthcare from three perspectives: historical, current and future. From a historical perspective, the influence of the ECHR on the rights of psychiatric patients in compulsory psychiatry is discussed. From a current perspective, the focus is on the importance of the ECHR for the protection of medical data in the context of new health technology. In the future, the ECHR will undoubtedly play a major role in the field of genetic engineering and gene-editing in individual health care.