On March 15 the council of the EU und and EU Parliament finally agreed on the European Health Data Space by concluding a provisional political agreement. It establishes rules for the use of health data for better healthcare delivery, research, innovation, and policymaking. Citizens will have electronic access to prescriptions, imagery and lab tests. Research will also benefit from the new regulation as aggregated health data can be shared for research purposes. To ensure adequate protection of data subjects, strong privacy safeguards will be implemented to ensure that the exchange of health data is safe and secure, and in particular in full compliance with the GDPR.

The European Parliament and the Council will now formally adopt the regulation. After that it will become applicable in different stages depending on use and data type.

We will keep you up to date on all developments and will take a closer look at the individual regulatory content of the EHDS in our next posts.