This month I published two commentaries on what Canada might learn from Europe's experience developing and implementing the European Health Data Space Regulation.
In the Canadian Journal of Public Health, Kim McGrail, Luca Marelli and I argue that regulation alone cannot resolve the politics of health data access and use, that value must be explicitly and inclusively defined rather than assumed. To do this, Canadian governance needs to widen its frame beyond individual privacy rights to address collective interests and group-based harms.
In a companion piece for Policy Options, Kim McGrail and I take up Canada's newly announced health-sector data space to make the case that its hardest challenges won't be technical. Drawing on the EHDS experience, we argue that deciding what the space is for, and who it should serve, must be considered at the outset.
