European health organisations call on legislators to protect patients’ personal data

Digitalisation can support better healthcare, safer medicines use, innovation and more accessible services. However, simplification must not come at the expense of fundamental rights, patient confidentiality, professional secrecy or trust in healthcare.

Health-related data are among the most sensitive categories of personal data. They can reveal intimate information about a person’s physical or mental health, treatment, medicines use, disability, vulnerability or life circumstances. This includes not only data explicitly labelled as health data, but also data inferred from searches, purchases, online consultations, pharmacy interactions, use of medicine-related websites, wearables, apps or connected services.

We call upon the co-legislators to:

1. Preserve the specific protection of health data in the digital environment

2. Ensure that AI development does not bypass safeguards for the use of patient data

3. Protect patients from tracking, profiling and commercial exploitation

4. Maintain strong safeguards for pseudonymised health data

5. Preserve the right not to be subject to automated decision-making and ensure meaningful human oversight in healthcare

6. Support innovation without weakening fundamental rights