EU Health Council drives creation of transformative technologies
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The European Cloud in Health Advisory Council was founded in 2015 under the leadership of Microsoft and has been actively advocating for an environment which allows healthcare institutions- and patients- to reap the benefits of cloud-based solutions. Meeting twice per year and including input from 30 high level representatives from hospitals, university medical centers, industry solution providers, policy advocates and even patient groups, the Council has spent recent meetings focusing on an emerging set of issues related to requirements for handling patient data under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enabling “research” uses of health data under the GDPR as well as issues related to the growing interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the healthcare sector.
In some of its initial work, the Council formulated a Call to Action for policymakers to embrace the positive value of cloud computing and implement changes to regulatory policy that would help remove actual or perceived impediments to using cloud computing services to host health data and even encourage the use of cloud services by default under “Cloud First” policies. Later work focused on promoting regulatory changes that would help create an environment where the healthcare sector can harness patient data for better health outcomes. A blog by Council lead Elena Bonfiglioli, Senior Director for Health Industry EMEA, entitled “How to Empower Health Services and Patients” summarizes much of this work and charts a helpful path forward for more work.
As part of its upcoming meeting during HIMSS Europe “Health in the Digital Society, Digital Society for Health” in Tallinn, Estonia October 16-18, 2017, the Council is releasing another Call to Action for policymakers to “Enable data-driven healthcare & research for citizen benefit while protecting patient privacy” which includes specific recommendations for Member States as they implement GDPR into their national data protection laws. The Call to Action points out the opportunity for Member States to adopt common security requirements for handling of health data and avoid restrictions that would impede cross border flow of such data.
But more importantly, the Call to Action highlights the need for Member State work related to GDPRs provisions related to research uses of health data, to lay the foundation for exciting work on AI-based technologies in the healthcare field that promise to transform care and empower care providers and patients. Decisions taken now will govern life-changing moments for European citizens and patients for years and even decades to come.
The Call to Action also includes specific recommendations related to research uses of health data. First, Member States should ensure legal clarity for the research community on the use of health data by providing clear definitions for key terminology, in particular setting out a broad definition of the concept of “scientific research” as set out in GDPR Recital 159, which will ensure that health data can be processed for public research, private research and technological development. Additionally, through dialogue with public health authorities, members of the research community, patient stakeholder groups and members of the healthcare and medical technology sectors, policymakers should clarify the additional types of “appropriate safeguards” that can be put in place for processing health data for research purposes under GDPR Article 89(1).
While research uses of health data are not new, the promise that we know see to harness that data to create new AI-based technologies is. And with vast amounts of low cost compute power and storage, tomorrow’s technological advances could be delivered sooner. The Council believes these recommendations could help make that a reality.
