The European Union aims to establish a super medical database that contains the medical information of citizens of the entire multinational bloc.
EU officials appear ready to start their new experiment with big data, with those within the new bloc promising to create a pan-European medical super-database containing the private health information of people from all 27 member states of the union. .
While the multinational organization’s mandarins appear to hail the move as the next big step forward in health care for the union, past examples of data leaks and expert warnings reveal that such a project could be fraught with dangers.
According to a press release on the European Union’s website, the so-called “European Health Data Space,” or EHDS, will allow medical professionals, as well as approved researchers and third parties, to access citizens’ medical data. in a way that is in compliance with EU laws regarding privacy and information security.
Reportedly, those who have your information in the system will also be able to control your information to a certain extent, being able to correct inaccurate items and restrict access to certain records to a certain extent, the extent of which is not mentioned in the press releases.
“The European Health Data Space will be a ‘new beginning’ for the EU’s digital health policy, making health data work for citizens and science,” said Margaritis Schinas, who serves as Vice President of the European Comission.
“Today, we are laying the foundation for secure and reliable access to health data that is fully in line with the core values that underpin the EU,” he continued.
Another EU czar, Health and Food Safety Commissioner Stella Kyriakides, praised the safeguards built into the system regarding data privacy and security.
“It puts citizens at the centre, giving them full control over their data for better healthcare across the EU,” he said.
“This data, accessed under strong security and privacy safeguards, will also be a treasure trove for scientists, researchers, innovators and policymakers working on the next life-saving treatment,” the official continued. “The EU is taking a truly historic step towards digital healthcare in the EU.”
France announces digital identity app just days after Macron’s re-electionhttps://t.co/wwMppUfVic
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 29, 2022
While authorities within the bloc may be patting themselves on the back regarding the benefits that such a planned database will have for citizens, it is highly likely that the project will not be entirely risk-free, as nations European companies traditionally have mixed luck when it comes to storing private data in government systems.
For example, serious information privacy concerns were raised in France regarding the country’s COVID “Pass Sanitaire” certificate after both the country’s president and prime minister suffered a private data leak via the measure. of COVID lockdown.
Information about the names of both men, their dates of birth, as well as when and what they were poked with to protect them against the Chinese coronavirus could be seen as a result of the leak, raising privacy concerns for ordinary citizens.
“Time and time again, governments say they are providing a data service to their citizens and claim they will be protected, but what we see is that this information ends up in data profiles available in Google searches,” said a researcher at security to Breitbart London regarding the dangers of the vaccine passes.
“The systems we have in place are too complicated and once the data is digitized and replicated in the database of the country you travel to, with its own set of privacy protocols, you are looking at an expanding universe. [of data]”, he went on to say.
However, despite this negative experience the French had with their digital vaccine pass system, it does not seem to have deterred French public officials from going further down the rabbit hole of big data, as the country announced since then that he was creating a full-fledged state. digital identification system just days after the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, was elected for a second term.