The future European Health Data Space will share citizens’ health data across the continent for the purposes of scientific research. So how will your data be kept safe?
Emmanuel Bacry, the Scientific Director of the Health Data Hub, gives Smart Health some answers:
“When we talk about health data, we think ‘security’ because it’s sensitive data. When data circulates inside a computer, there’s no such thing as zero risk.
“The only answer to this is to have regulation that’s efficient, allows fluid access to data… and is extremely secure”.
No one has access to identifiable data
“At no point in the Health Data Hub data pipeline process are we allowed to access directly identifying data.”
The data is encrypted
“Within the platform that we’ve built - with the machines in France to meet European standards - the data is encrypted. This means that it’s like encrypted passwords on the Internet. It's the same thing, but obviously with extremely high levels of encryption.”
Secure Bubbles
“We open secure bubbles for each research project that operates on our platform. These bubbles are totally sealed from each other, totally independent, and the researchers only have access to the pseudonymous data they need. Obviously, there is no way to take the data out of this bubble and there’s a criminal ban on trying to re-identify people.”
