Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Apr 11, 2020
Date Accepted: May 22, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: May 25, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
COVID-19: Putting the GDPR to the test
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic is very much a global health issue, and requires collaborative health research efforts across countries to address it. A valuable source of information for researchers is the large amount of digital health data that are continuously collected by electronic health record systems at health care organizations. However, such digital health data typically exists in separate systems and researchers in many countries are currently severely hamstrung by the lack of integrated and comprehensive, publicly available, patient-level data regarding COVID-19. In our opinion, there is an ethical obligation to use the research exemption clause of the GDPR during the COVID-19 pandemic to support global collaborative health research efforts. Solidarity is a European value and here is a chance to exemplify it by using the GDPR regulatory framework in a way that does not hinder but actually fosters solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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