The Dawn of a European Health Data Space – Opportunities

the-dawn-of-a-european-health-data-space-opportunities

At the start of 2020, the European Commission launched a “European strategy for data.” The doc proposes to bolster and advance the info financial system in Europe with a view in direction of capturing “the benefits of better use of data, including greater productivity and competitive markets, but also improvements in health and well-being, environment, transparent governance and convenient public services.”

Salient was the announcement’s inclusionary language, that “data should be available to all – whether public or private, big or small, start-up or giant.” Also revealing was its concurrent launch with a White Paper on synthetic intelligence (AI). The EC acknowledges that numerous knowledge come from throughout sectors and are intimately entwined with AI – one can not exist with out the opposite. Just as ample, high-quality knowledge are an absolute requisite for significant AI, the potential of AI drives as we speak’s worth and use of huge knowledge.

One pillar of the EU knowledge technique is the institution of widespread European knowledge areas in domains of public curiosity. Among these is well being knowledge,

with two broad motion gadgets fastidiously embedded within the context of GDPR:

  • Create legislature to strengthen citizen entry to and portability of their very own well being knowledge, in addition to a code of conduct for processing these knowledge within the healthcare sector.
  • Deploy infrastructure that helps interoperability of digital well being data, federated knowledge repositories, genomic data, medical pictures, laboratory outcomes, prescriptions and different documentation to not solely ease healthcare administration, but in addition foster analysis and innovation towards discovering, regulating and legislating efficient therapies that forestall, diagnose and deal with illnesses.

Altogether, this as a chance. The EC envisions developing an ecosystem of experimentation, creativity and differentiation to supply new companies (suppose: BenevolentAI) and data-based instruments that, for instance, yield novel antibiotics, predict synergistic combination therapies for most cancers, or discover drug candidates to repurpose for rare diseases.

Recently, we’ve developed and nurtured open knowledge aggregations as our contribution to the worldwide response in opposition to SARS-CoV-2. The COVID-19 Mendeley Data and Coronavirus Research Hub might supply concepts on methods to institutionalize knowledge areas. We are searching for companions to develop this idea and begin a dialogue from which an EU knowledge house can evolve. Please contact my colleague Xuanyan Xu at [email protected] in case you are serious about collaborating.