The increased growth in the use of transmission of multimedia medical contents over unsecured and open networks provides insecurity for confidential patient information over these networks. Digital encryption of medical images before transmission and storage is proposed as a way to effectively provide protection of patient information. Encryption before watermarking of these images is necessary in order to ensure inaccessibility of information to unauthorized personnel with patient. This paper presented a visual cryptographic technique for encrypting of medical images before transmission or storage of them. This will make such images inaccessible by unauthorized personnel and also ensures confidentiality. The process made use of an encryption technique that is based on pixel shuffling and a secret key generated from the image.