Building a European Health Data Hub to Encourage Reuse of Health Data

This is an important step that has just been taken. On April 24, the European Parliament definitively adopted the regulation on the European Health Data Space (EHDS). To come into force, the provisional agreement must now be approved by the Council of the European Union. Its entry into application will take place over the next 2 to 6 years.

France welcomed this adoption. As a reminder, this text was initially presented during the French presidency of the European Union from January 1 to June 30, 2022. Also, by adopting this text, Parliament responds to the demands of citizens formulated in the conclusions of the Conference on future of Europe, in particular the recommendation which called for the creation of a health data space to facilitate exchanges.

“This text, eagerly awaited in Europe and in France, will provide European impetus in terms of the health of populations throughout Europe, on the one hand, and in terms of innovation on the other.“, reacted the French Ministry of Health and Prevention. At the French level, it is the Digital Health Delegation (DNS) which is responsible for coordinating the application of the regulation.

Facilitate access to health data

In practice, this text creates an infrastructure allowing sharing health data contained in medical records for cross-border patient care. On the patient side, the benefit is an improvement in care and on the health professional side, it is about benefiting from simplified access to medical records. This is the primary use of health data. To do this, the regulation provides for the establishment a harmonized technical and legal framework for the development, marketing and development of electronic health record systems (electronic health record systems, EHR systems).

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