“Europe’s health data space paves the way for a wave of innovation to benefit patients”

LOn July 20, the European Commission chose to entrust the Health Data Hub, a consortium of sixteen partners from ten different countries, with the construction of the first version of the future “European Health Data Space” (European Health Data Space, EDHS) as of September.

In early May, it presented its proposal for a regulation on a European health data area, which will soon be presented to the Council of the European Union and then to the European Parliament. The choice of operator, now confirmed, therefore brings EDHS a little closer to reality, without removing all the “reservations”. This is especially true of choosing Microsoft Azure, a US player, to host this health data and guarantee that this data cannot cross the Atlantic.

This question, as well as other questions that will not be raised, will require strong and transparent answers. This provides a guarantee of trust without which the long-term investment will be compromised. But the stakes are high. EDHS’s call is “Putting citizens at the center, empowering them to control their data to benefit from better healthcare”says Stella Kyriakides, European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety.

The EDHS paves the way for a wave of innovation for the benefit of patients and should also allow for the establishment of a single European market for digital therapies equipped with common rules, which in turn will help the emergence of a competitive European health technology. Fabric under American competition.

A gold mine

At the heart of this revolution – and this is what makes the issue of data protection so sensitive – is “patient data”. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and big data, it is a goldmine for identifying biological markers and interpreting data.

These markers themselves are the basis of new diagnostic tools (medical imaging, biology) and prevention (symptom interpretation, drug interaction analysis) that are rapidly being used in hospitals and medical practices.

Devices in diabetes and oncology “care facility” [« au plus près des patients »]Installed on smartphones and became smart thanks to machine learningSupports patients in monitoring their pathology and their therapy, keeping health professionals “in the frame”.