Health data center selected to lead future European health data area

Winner of the call for projects launched at the end of 2021, the Health Data Hub has been selected by the European Commission to build, as of September, the first version of the future European Health Data Space (EDS). Introduced last May, EDS is a framework for sharing health data based on common rules and practices for reuse in research, innovation, policy development, patient safety, and statistics.

The Health Data Hub is a French group of public interest (GIP). He is responsible for creating and managing a platform that collects all data from health insurance and hospitals related to deaths and disabilities. Under certain conditions, this data can be reused for research purposes, in particular for the development of machine learning systems.

16 partners from 10 countries

The European Union, led by the Health Data Hub, will bring together 16 partners from about ten European countries. These include, for example, Sciensano, a Belgian federal research institute, Findata, which is the Finnish licensing authority for social and health data, or the Croatian Institute of Public Health. will aim toResponding to the challenges of access to health data across the European Union, to open new avenues for research and innovation‘, announces the GIP.

Practically speaking, the consortium will be responsible for the development and dissemination of “Network of data source platforms“By linking the platforms of the participating countries as well as the evaluation”Feasibility, usefulness and ability to deploy such infrastructure“At the EU level. The performance of this infrastructure will be tested with concrete research use cases.

HDH is still hosted by Azure

The health data center was chosen while it is still hosted by Microsoft Azure. This choice is questioned by several
levels. He would have been chosen by the government.”Without competition (…) on the grounds that only Microsoft has the technological capabilities to provide such infrastructure”, according to the Anticor Association that took over the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF).

Besides the purely procedural aspect, rescinding the Privacy Shield – this provision that allows data to be transferred across the Atlantic by recognizing that US law offers the same guarantees as European law – has called Microsoft’s choice into question, according to several associations. A fear rejected by the State Council, revealing the existence of an amendment that obliges the American company to obtain the approval of the health data center for any data transfer.outside the specified geographical area“.