Joint European Cluster Declaration “Towards a common European Health Data Space in the time of Covid-19 and beyond – Bottlenecks and Solutions”
The Declaration on the necessary steps to create a European Health Data Space brings together countries known for their innovative digital health system as well as from regions where the pressure of corona infections has greatly accelerated existing digital care approaches. The input for this declaration comes from countries like Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, the UK, Austria, Germany and Poland.
The declaration is submitted to the German EU Council Presidency as the voice of civil society on the need for a common European health data space. We suggest that these ideas be taken up during the official European Data conference on 11th November 2020 (“Digital Health 2020 – EU on the Move”, organized by the German Ministry of Health. Please support the declaration and join the civil society movement for a European Health Data Space: https://scanbalt.org/scanbaltforum2020/support-the-declaration/
In the declaration, the European experts propose concrete measures:
- All European citizens should retain control over their health data according to GDPR and be able to share them in a secure way with authorised partners.
- The EU must extend its harmonization and interoperability efforts to data relevant to promote research, prevention and personalized care.
- The EU needs a clearing agency for digital health applications in the fields of infectious diseases and control – under the umbrella of the ECDC
- To achieve faster digitization of hospitals incentive systems modelled on the US government’s “meaningful use” program are recommended
- To overcome the deployment gap digital health in Europe, the establishment of a biennial research-based EU-wide monitoring-report on best practice examples is recommendable.
Jaanus Pikani, ScanBalt Chairman:
“COVID-19 has shown us that the European data space already exists in the form of great individual projects – now a European regulation must be made of it. Therefore, we present the German EU Council Presidency with a position of European civil society, which it can take up for its further activities. There is no doubt that digitization improves healthcare in Europe. It also creates the conditions for keeping our healthcare systems financially viable and provides new economic impulses, which we urgently need after the Corona crisis.”
