The EU launches the European Health Data Space — common rules and digital medicine without borders

The EU launches the European Health Data Space — common rules and digital medicine without borders

The European Union is launching a large-scale initiative, the European Health Data Space (EHDS), which will unite the medical data of EU citizens into a single, secure digital system.

The goal is to make medical care and research more accessible, personalized and effective, while ensuring patient control over their information.

EHDS includes two areas of work:

• Primary use — improving the provision of medical care, including cross-border treatment. Patients will be able to provide access to their electronic medical records to doctors in any EU country.

• Secondary use — providing anonymized data for scientific research, drug development, health systems analysis and policy making.

Key projects:

MyHealth@EU — infrastructure for exchanging electronic prescriptions, extracts, lab results and medical images between countries. Two services have already been implemented:

• Patient Summary — a short medical dossier with information on chronic diseases, allergies and treatment;

• ePrescription/eDispensation — electronic prescriptions valid in any EU country.

By 2026, it is planned to connect laboratory results, medical images, reports and hospital discharge summaries.

HealthData@EU is a system for secure access of researchers and government agencies to anonymized data for developing innovative solutions, conducting clinical trials and forming healthcare policy.

EHDS is based on the GDPR, the Data Governance Act and the Data Act, which regulate access, compatibility, security and transparency in data exchange. These laws create a unified legal basis for the functioning of data spaces and provide mechanisms for the protection of personal information.

It is expected that by 2030, medical data will be able to move securely between all EU countries, and patients will be able to receive care in any country as easily as at home.

This will open up new opportunities for patients with rare diseases: data on diagnoses, examinations and treatment will be available to doctors abroad, and anonymized information will become a resource for large-scale international research, accelerating the development of orphan drugs and improving understanding of the course of rare diseases.

Explore the topic in more detail (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XvU2MBh2FQWKKb-OWW_Zc-Gtj7YHxfWs/view?usp=sharing)