FEDERA Salud: Early Adoption of SIMPL for Federated Health Data Spaces in Spain

Health data spaces are emerging as essential infrastructures for secure and interoperable data sharing across decentralized health systems. This work presents the initial deployment of FEDERA Salud, Spain's first federated health data repository based on SIMPL, developed at the University Hospital Virgen del Rocio (HUVR) - Institute of Biomedicine of Seville (IBIS). The system enables secure, interoperable data exchange while preserving data sovereignty through a Kubernetes-based architecture and aligned with FAIR principles. It incorporates identity and access management, digital contracts and an app-to-data model to support privacy-preserving computation. Additionally, a metadata catalogue compliant with healthDCAT-AP enhances dataset discoverability and semantic interoperability, and governance adheres to GDPR and national regulations for secondary use of health data. Initial results indicate that SIMPL's Minimum Viable Product (MVP) provides a scalable and trustworthy foundation for Spain's contribution to the European Health Data Space.