European Health Data Space

It's impos- it's impossible to tell.

Um, and, and widening out to the European Health Data Space regulation or the E- EHDS, um, which is...

I mean, that's arguably one of the biggest developments in the EU for health research ethics in recent years.

Can you, can you explain to me what, what that is? [laughs]And what it means.

Mm-hmm.

That's a very positive thing.

The other thing is that anonymized health data from that record is going into a European health data space, which would be huge numbers of people, huge numbers of data, which would provide a really valuable resource for large-scale research.

And research at this stage, an awful lot of the studies are dealing with 50, 100, 200, um, 100,000 people.

It treats many healthcare applications as high risk, imposing requirements around risk management, data quality, transparency, and human oversight.

The European Health Data Space is building a common framework for health data across all twenty-seven EU member states, designed both to give people more control over their records and to support the responsible reuse of data for research, policy, and innovation.

And the World Health Organization has now surveyed AI use in healthcare across the European Union, the first comprehensive snapshot of how governments are bringing the technology into their health systems.

So today, we go to the other side of the pond.

... of differentiation that you described, and we'll see whether everyone comes out of that okay.

Uh, Seema Verma, a- another guest, uh, from Oracle, uh, told this series that American, uh, electronic health records need rewiring because AI really requires it and can do better with EHRs that are built for AI use.

Europe's answer may be the European Health Data Space, uh, adopted last year, one framework for health data across all 27 EU countries by the end of the decade.

What will EHDS make possible that fragmented American sort of databases, uh, may not? And what are the Europeans-- Are they giving up anything by having this centralization?

Europe has spent nearly two hundred million euros over two decades on cross-border health data projects.

These project were essential for the establishment of the European Health Data Space, which is now in progress.

So I invited Henrik Martins, associate professor at ISCTE in Lisbon, and the coordinator of many of the EU projects for healthcare data exchange, to join the show and talk a little bit more about where EHDS is at the moment, what's the legacy and the outcome of the past European projects, and what can we expect in terms of the upcoming milestones for EHDS.

We discussed everything from concrete projects that are ending this year's expectations on what we will be able to say about EHDS at the end of next year, the role of AI in the implementation of interoperability and AI and data use in Europe, the patient role in this whole story and much, much more.

Enjoy the show.

Make sure to check out Faces of Digital Health also on YouTube, where all the episodes are in the video format, supported by visuals from various websites.

And in the example of this episode, there's a timeline of EHDS milestones and some of the projects that are supporting the implementation.

We are also on LinkedIn, so make sure to follow us there.

I

came up in a conversation we recorded yesterday with an international guest with European Health Data Space, right? And this level of harmonization that everyone can mostly agree to.

I think it's sort of an interesting model, especially when you think about the beginning powers as originally conceived could have imagined a context like behind ourselves.

I guess I'm also curious about where you see that kind of relationship and those strategic intersections between the levels of government going.

How far are we from being cross-European data transfer being agreed between countries for health care?

I mean it's done to some extent but I think so I mean there is this new regulation European health data space and I think...

That's where I'm heading.

That's where you're heading.

We need to, we fragmented system, and we need to connect the expertise, streamline our processes, and simplify the regulations so that it's just a much more faster and effective process to go from research to manufacturing to innovation and patient access.

As a foundation underpinning the life sciences strategy and actually underpinning the delivery of integrated care right across the member states is the European Health Data Space, the EHDS, and we are really excited about that.

Ireland, we are not happy with where we are in terms of digitization, but we are going to move really fast in a coherent way now to deliver summary care records for our people.

In fact, the European Health Data Space Regulation, I would say, is the most citizen-centered piece of law I've ever seen.

And that's what I work in.

It literally commits to all of us as European citizens that our government will present to us our own summary care information by literally a date, by the end of March, 2029, and by 2031, that all our diagnostics and tests will be available to us and to any health or social care professional with a direct interest in our primary care.

Yeah, there's a whole range of reasons why they moved the way they did.

And that's exactly what Europe is also trying to do with the European health data space, to just connect systems across borders, enable exchange of data.

It's when we look at the numbers of when EHDS ideas started, they coincide interestingly with your own career as well, because the idea for EHDS started shaping in April 10th.

And I think that's also when you started working for Vita Group.