The European Union is aiming to set up a medical super-database containing the medical information of citizens from across the multinational bloc.
EU officials look set to start their newest 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 across the union’s 27 member states.
While the multinational organisation’s mandarins appear to be praising the move as the next big step forward in healthcare for the union, past examples of data leaks and warnings from experts reveal that such a project might be fraught with danger.
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 citizen’s medical data in a way that is in keeping with EU laws surrounding privacy and information security.
Those who have their information on the system will also reportedly be able to control their information to some degree, being able to correct inaccurate elements and restrict access to certain records to some degree, the extent of which is left unmentioned 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 the Vice-President of the European Commission.
“Today, we are laying down the foundations for secure and trustworthy access to health data that is fully in line with the fundamental values underpinning the EU,” he continued.
Another EU tsar, Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides, heaped praise onto the safeguards built into the system in regards to data privacy and security.
“It places the citizens at its centre, empowering them with full control over their data to obtain better healthcare across the EU,” she said.
“This data, accessed under strong safeguards for security and privacy, will also be a treasure trove for scientists, researchers, innovators and policy-makers working on the next life-saving treatment,” the official continued. “The EU is taking a truly historic step forward towards digital healthcare in the EU.”
France Announces Digital Identity App Just Days After Macron Re-Electionhttps://t.co/wwMppUfVic
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 29, 2022
While authorities within the bloc may be patting themselves on the back in regards to the benefits such a planned database will have for citizens, it is highly likely that the project is not completely risk-free, with European nations traditionally having mixed luck when it comes to the storage of private data on government systems.
For example, serious concerns surrounding information privacy arose in France concerning the country’s “Pass Sanitaire” COVID cert after both the country’s President and Prime Minister had their private data leak through the COVID lockdown measure.
Information regarding the names of both men, their dates of birth, as well as when and with what they were jabbed with to protect them against the Chinese Coronavirus could be viewed as a result of the leak, prompting concerns for the privacy of normal citizens.
“Time and time again governments say that they are providing a data service to their citizens and claim that it will be protected, but what we see is this information ending up in data profiles available on Google searches,” one security researcher told Breitbart London regarding the dangers of vaccine passes.
“The systems we have are too complicated and once that data gets digitised and out there and replicated in the country’s database that you are travelling to, with its own set of privacy protocols, you are looking at an expanding universe [of data],” he went on to say.
Despite this negative experience the French had with their digital vaccine pass system however, it does not seem to have deterred French civil servants from moving further down the big data rabbit hole, with the country having since announced that it was creating a fully-fledged state digital ID system only days after the country’s president, Emmanuel Macron, was elected to a second term in office.
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