Participation of the director of the Chair, Ricard Martínez, in the Data-driven future of Healthcare conference organized by the Healthcare Data Innovation Council.

“We need to process data for the development of humanity”. With this statement, Professor Ricard Martínez M. gave the sense and motivation to work on the design of data management systems in health. "We must consider the common good as the main purpose of data processing", he added.

This idea from the director of the Microsoft-Universitat de València Privacy and Digital Transformation Chair was part of his speech at the Data-driven future of Healthcare conference. The event was organised by the Healthcare Data Innovation Council and took place in

Brussels, Belgium.
Among other notions, Martínez suggested that data processing in healthcare requires ascertaining the reality and needs of society. From there, a common legal framework for Europe with a focus on research should be sought.

In fact, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) prescribes that systems must be developed and implemented to enable research with data, making a reasonable effort for its protection considering the technology available worldwide. In other words, the regulation does not mandate privacy protection in a restricted manner. The right of individuals to benefit from research with available data must also be protected.  

To comply with this obligation, Martínez pointed out, it is necessary to create safe environments, with registration and traceability to process the data and, at the same time, “commit to a federated European data space”. The meaning of this is that data that is processed according to local laws and research results can be shared in other EU states. 

“Data management technology should be seen as an assistance to provide traceability, control and guarantees to the patients' rights,” the academic concluded.

• Panel Registration

Martínez spoke at the Healthcare Data Opportunities and Challenges table, where he shared with Meni Styliadou, founder and co-lead at H2O Enterprise; Julián Isla, director and co-founder of Foundation 29; Elena Bonfiglioli, Microsoft Health and Life Sciences EMEA; Elisa Ficarra, professor and researcher at the University of Modena e Reggio Emilia; Francis D’Silva, director of CGI Norway; and Heidi Beate Bentzen, researcher at the University of Oslo and advisor to the TEHDAS WP8 group.

The panel starts at minute 19’ and ends at 1h47’.
 

• The Council

The Healthcare Data Innovation Council is a partnership of healthcare stakeholders such as physicians, patients, researchers, pharmaceutical and medical technology companies. The aim is to advance regulatory frameworks and privacy protection technologies for sharing and using data in the healthcare industry.