After several years of controversy, France’s health data platform is set to leave Microsoft’s cloud for its homegrown company Scaleway.
As part of a broader European push to reduce strategic dependency on US cloud and software providers, France has chosen Scaleway to host the national Health Data Hub, replacing Microsoft Azure. Scaleway is a subsidiary of Iliad, a French telecommunications group.
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The public institution’s database contains the health information of millions of French citizens. It was intended to replicate the entire French health data system (SNDS), managed by the national health insurance, and to serve as a digital resource for researchers seeking large-scale, long-term data.
Back in 2019, Microsoft was chosen to provide the cloud infrastructure and host the platform’s data.
Concerns over data privacy, security and legal control
However, the project did not proceed as planned as France’s data protection authority, National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) issued a critical opinion highlighting concerns over data privacy and security.
French regulators had since then criticised that even if the data was stored in France, it could still be accessed or requested by US authorities under American law if the provider is a US company.
France was also concerned about the legal control over access, protection, or disclosure of highly sensitive medical information.
In February, the French government had announced its intention to withdraw the hosting of this particularly sensitive platform from Microsoft by the end of the year. In 2024 it had passed a law that now requires “sovereign-guaranteed” hosting for sensitive data.
A large health database for researchers
The migration is part of “a long-standing effort to maintain a high level of security and trust for all users of the platform,” said Hela Ghariani, the director of the Health Data Platform, in a press release.,
She added that it marks an important step in accelerating the use of SNDS data and broader health-data-driven research and innovation in France and across Europe.
The system will store health records of tens of millions of citizens and is expected to go fully live between late 2026 and early 2027.
Moving away from US big tech
Across Europe, governments are reducing reliance on major US tech providers in public administration systems.
Germany’s state of Schleswig-Holstein is shifting 30,000 government workstations away from Microsoft tools. In Denmark, parts of the public administration are transitioning to the open-source LibreOffice suite.
Meanwhile, the European Commission has reinforced this shift by awarding a €180 million cloud contract to a consortium including Scaleway, OVHcloud, STACKIT, and Post Telecom.
