Towards the European Health Data Space (EHDS) ecosystem: A survey research on future health data scenarios

The European Health Data Space (EHDS) aims to provide better exchange and expand access to health data across Europe. In this way, the EHDS will support healthcare delivery (known as the "primary use of data") and facilitate access to health data for research and policy-making purposes (known as the "secondary use of data"). To achieve this goal, we need to build the required ecosystem of the EHDS with all healthcare stakeholders.

We conducted a survey research study to explore the health informaticians' recommendations on future health data scenarios shaping the EHDS ecosystem. We created an anonymous- online questionnaire and disseminated it through wide international networks of health informaticians. In addition, we conducted a workshop during the Medical Informatics Europe Conference (MIE2022) and invited the attendees to complete the questionnaire during the workshop.

We received 43 responses to our questionnaire from 15 European Union (EU) countries and 7 non-EU countries. Most respondents described the current health data scenario in their countries as a traditional healthcare system with moderate growth (25.6 %, n = 11). The second selected scenario was the reinventing healthcare scenario in a data-driven one-world framework (23.3 %, n = 10).

The results of this work are matched with the findings of the recently published study on digital health implementation in the EU (conducted by the French government in April 2022). This also reflects the current ongoing efforts in the EU countries to deploy national infrastructure for health data management, exchange, and sharing.

Upon the respondents' recommendations, there is a strong need to support the health democratization scenarios in Europe, as the main driver for building the EHDS ecosystem.