A number of safeguards have been put in place to protect the confidentiality of patient medical information. All authorized users of the system must be registered and approved for access (See "Who can access the information collected by INSPECT?"). And even after access to the system has been granted, to ensure confidentiality of patients' medical records, a multitude of statutory restrictions still apply. For instance, a practitioner submitting a request for patient information must be providing medical or pharmaceutical treatment to the patient in question, or must be evaluating the need for such treatment. Likewise, members of the law enforcement community are only allowed to obtain private information in cases where an investigation dealing with controlled substances is already underway.