InteropEHRate contributes to European Health Data Space(s): Webinar on enabling data re-use
A European Health Data Space (EHDS) has been set as a top priority for European health policies and health IT industry active in Europe. The patient-centric InteropEHRate approach – health data “in peoples’ hand” – is a powerful enabler towards this objective.
End of June 2020, right in time before the onset of the German EU Presidency activities towards the EHDS, InteropEHRate supported the ELO Network Virtual Meeting entitled Making real-world data fit for EHDS: Architectures and processes enabling data re-use. It was part of the EHTEL Imagining 2029 work programme, a programme that builds on aseries of webinars and workshops – hosted by its working groups.
This EHTEL programme is focused on accelerating digital transformation while acknowledging the opportunities and challenges raised by the current COVID-19 crisis. This webinar is belongs to the agenda 2020 of the ELO Network of eHealth competence centres Getting ready for European Health Data Space(s).
The webinar’s agenda focused on European policies and governance principles for data re-use and interoperability frameworks for data and consent. It also featured lessons learned on health data re-use by national and regional eHealth competence centres. The virtual meeting was opened by Andreas Grode (ELO Co-Chair, gematik eHealth Competence Centre, Germany) who introduced the agenda and co-chaired by Vesa Jormanainen (ELO Co-Chair, THL, Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland).
A presentation by Stephan Schug (EHTEL / InteropEHRate) followed, which described the introductory European Health Data Space presentations and discussions in a foregoing ELO webinar on 20 May 2020.
István Czismadiá (AEEK Hungary) and Márton Kis (Semmelweis University, Budapest) described the joint action that supports the work of the eHealth Network, (eHN) called eHAction, and its work on the common governance principles for the re-use of health data, part of the eHN multi-Annual work programme 2018 – 2021.
Alessio Graziani (Engineering, Italy) reported on the InteropEHRate approach to sharing patient-centric data and enabling data altruism, outlining its FHIR compliant key protocols and APIs.
Stefano Dalmiani (Fondazione CNR/Regione Toscana Gabriele Monasterio – FTGM – Pisa, Italy) explained the InteropEHRate approach for of data re-use for research (InteropEHRate scenario 3).
The last part of the virtual meeting featured an interactive, Q&A discussion. It was facilitated by Henrique Martins (Digital Health Systems, Portugal), and revolved around the re-use of health data, data lakes, and GDPR patient’s consent.
This webinar content builds the foundation for further explorations of health data spaces. It highlights the need for interactions among health and care staff, patients and citizens, and the centres responsible for providing technological and infrastructure support in the European Member States. Some further elements to be explored are the contributions of public and private initiatives for operationalising decentralised data spaces and suitable privacy concepts like a dynamic “broad” consent.
