GDPR is a massive headache for big data
Europe’s onerous General Data Protection Regulation is a massive headache for big data, said delegates at HIMSS 2018.
Dr Frederic Llordach, CEO of Doctoralia, the international ratings and second opinion site, said: “It just creates another barrier. It makes public sector institutions hugely more cautious about any data sharing.”
There is widespread confusion about how much GDPR will impact on the sector – as every country is tasked with interpreting the directive, there will be variants. Elena Bonfiglioli , Regional Business Leader Health and Life Sciences EMEA Microsoft said: “Our analysis shows we could end up with everyone interpreting gdpr differently and interpreting exceptions differently. How do we then fulfil the promise of precision medicine? In oncology you see organisations needing to standardise and share as much as possible and to do that we need clarity.”
“I wish I knew how it worked at a European level,” says Priit Tohver, an adviser to Estonia’s pioneering ministry of health.”Even in Estonia it is not super-easy to send our genetic data abroad, we would need specific consent for that.
Llordach is quietly furious. “It was only when Kaiser Permanent did big data analytics in the early 2000s on 1m cancer patients that we were able to identify that Merck’s Vioxx drug was as a killer. And that is the point: by sharing data we can avoid unnecessary deaths.”
Our Analysis: Data protection has been hijacked by rights campaigners playing on fears of the state. What is puzzling is the muted response from the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry. Why were big medtech and big pharma so slow to lobby against this legislation when it was first proposed?
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