EU Ready to Spend €2.5 Billion on Hub for Health-Care Data

(Bloomberg) -- European Union patients will be allowed to move their health-care data across the bloc, part of a wide-ranging proposal unveiled by the European Commission.

The EU's European Health Data Space aims to get citizens access to their e-prescriptions and health records online, according to an announcement from the European Commission on Tuesday. This system, to start by 2025, will be connected with all 27 EU member states, meaning people can travel around the EU and still access their health information.

Researchers and pharma companies will also get access to anonymized data to improve the development of medicines, including making personalized cancer treatments or using artificial intelligence. Regulators and policymakers could also get access to improve health policy decisions.

“With the European Health Data Space, we can harness the power of health data and stronger health research, with citizens in control of their data at all times,” Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said. “It will be a game changer for how we deliver healthcare and health solutions, always for the benefit of citizens and patients.”

The cost of creating the European Health Data Space will be between 700 million euros and 2.5 billion euros ($2.6 billion), according to an EU impact assessment seen by Bloomberg. The commission estimates that EU countries will spend another 12 billion euros to digitalize their health systems more broadly, according to an EU official.

The commission views the health data space proposal as an extension of the EU's increasingly coordinated approach to health throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. This was most clear with the EU's Digital Covid Certificate which allowed citizens to show their vaccination and recovery status to travel around the union and enter businesses.

But the commission could face hurdles convincing countries to sign on, as they have long been reluctant to share data across borders and have digitalized their systems to differing degrees. Under the proposal, EU countries will bear the brunt of digitalizing their health systems, which can be a time-consuming and often costly switch.

Some like Denmark provide health apps to citizens, and other EU countries like Finland and Estonia exchange health data across borders. However, many patients throughout the EU often can't move their health data between health systems or regions within the same country because health systems rely heavily on paper records or systems cannot communicate with one another.

Lawmakers are also concerned about possible data breaches, especially with increasing cyber attacks on health systems in the EU. Tiemo Wolken, a Socialist German parliamentarian, wrote in a statement that data protection is of “paramount importance.”

“Patients must be able to fully trust the digital exchange of data, and highly sensitive personal health data must not fall into the wrong hands,” Wolken said. “In the coming weeks, we will now examine whether the Commission's proposal meets these high requirements.”